I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Magnetic Terrapin Studios present Undocumented Features Future Imperfect THE LEGACY OF KORRA / THE ORDER OF THE ROSE Suite for Avatar and Trinity (The Diqiu Suite) Fourth Movement: Familiar Spirits Benjamin D. Hutchins with Anne Cross Philip Jeremy Moyer (c) 2014 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited XINQITIAN, SANYUE 21, 291 ASC (SUNDAY, MARCH 21, SY 2410) AIR TEMPLE ISLAND, DIQIU The sun parlor of the big house in the middle of the Air Temple complex was a scene of bustle bordering on chaos by mid-morning on Sunday. Corwin Ravenhair and Korra, with the aid of a team of Air Acolytes, were moving furniture around and generally reconfiguring the room. While they were about it, a team from Republic Telephone and Telegraph was on hand, along with a couple of technicians from Sato Computing Machines. That end of the room was a welter of discarded packing materials, uncoiled cables, and impenetrable telco jargon as the phone workers and SCM techs installed a couple of phones, a massive SCM Mark V DesignDesk CAD console, and the heavy-duty dedicated data line necessary to link the last back to the mainframe computer at Future Industries headquarters. The commotion was such that no one in the room noticed that two people had appeared in the open double doorway leading back into the house for nearly a minute, until Corwin happened to look up from getting his end of the futon-daybed positioned nearer the wall and saw them there. Grinning at the sight, he caught Korra's eye and directed her attention to the doorway as well. They finished arranging the daybed - easily the largest item of furniture in the room if one didn't count the DesignDesk - and then went over to greet the new arrivals. "I thought you said you were planning to -relax- here," said Corwin's mother Skuld with a laugh as she hugged her only son. "We are!" Corwin said. "As soon as we've got the office set up... " "It's not as bad as it looks," Korra agreed, giving Corwin's father - Gryphon of the IPO, known to his driver's license as Ben Hutchins - a hug of her own. "You finally made it!" "Don't you start," Gryphon chided her mildly. "I'm sure you all had plenty to do the last few days without us underfoot, anyway." "Well, OK, can't really argue with that," Korra conceded with a wry little grin. Turning to the two Air Acolytes who'd been helping with the furniture, she added, "You guys can take off - these two will take it from here if we need any more heavy lifting. Thanks for your help." "Hah, now the truth is revealed," said Skuld cheerfully. "Everything under control over there?" Corwin called to the technicians. The senior man from SCM, a buzzcut, intense young man in an immaculate white shirt with sleeves that looked like they'd been rolled up with reference to a straightedge and then ironed that way, gave him a serious thumbs-up and nodded firmly. Corwin returned a little salute, as if to say "Very well, carry on," and then turned to his parents. "They're good. Let's go see if the ladies are up for some new visitors." "I know it looks crazy in there right now," Korra said as the four of them walked down the hall to the house's main living room, "but the RTT guys and Ryo's team will be finished by lunchtime." Corwin nodded. "Then Ryo's coming out this afternoon to turn up the link back to the mothership, and we're in business. By two o'clock you'll never even know they were here. Apart from the giant computer." Skuld chuckled and ruffled his thick black hair. "My boy." "I know at least three ladies who'd give you an argument about that," Korra quipped. "Hey, any finite resource can be multiplexed," said Skuld casually. Corwin cleared his throat theatrically. "Standing right here," he remarked. "That's half the fun," Skuld replied airily. "Have you not figured that out yet?" "Don't look at me," said Gryphon when Corwin did exactly that. "I've known better than to try and slow these two down since the day you were born. Literally." "Thanks, Dad, huge help as always," Corwin grumbled. "Live to serve," Gryphon replied imperturbably. "Oh, Korra, remind me when things quiet down a little - I've got something to show you," said Skuld. Korra looked intrigued. "Oh?" Skuld nodded. "It's with the rest of the stuff. Don't let me forget." "OK." Korra knocked on the jamb of the open living room door and leaned her head around it. "Everybody decent in here? I've got a couple of stragglers to see Herself and the Red Terror." "Come in, Korra," came Anthy Tenjou's cheerful voice, and the visitors found themselves ushered into the presence by a beaming Avatar and quietly smiling Corwin. Anthy, dressed in multilayered red clothes similar to those of the island's regular inhabitants, was seated at one end of a large, comfortable-looking sofa, and Utena, in cargo shorts and baseball shirt, was propped up sideways against the other arm. In between them, Corwin and Anthy's infant daughter Annabelle dozed peacefully on the middle cushion with her dragon companion Garnet coiled protectively around her. Standing before the couch, Skuld stood looking down at the infant and hatchling for a moment or two, her face almost blank. Then she turned to Gryphon as he stepped up beside her and said matter-of- factly, "I am so not ready for this." "It's not as if you haven't had any time to prepare," Gryphon observed. "I know, but you know me, I got busy with other stuff. Besides, it's Corwin. I always assumed I'd have until he was at least 30." "Thank you, Mother," said Corwin dryly as Utena, Anthy, and Korra all giggled. "Anyway," Gryphon went on relentlessly, "ready or not, we're here now." "Annabelle," said Anthy softly, rising and then collecting her daughter from the couch. "Wake up, darling. It's time to say hello to some very special people." "Whuzza," said Garnet blurrily, raising her head. "Oh. It's you guys. What ho an' that." Speaking as though to a much older child, Anthy smilingly-but- seriously introduced Annabelle to her grandparents, first Skuld, then Gryphon. They, in turn, greeted her quietly, while she regarded them with that abstract but curiously thoughtful expression Corwin had noticed on her in the very first moments. "Would you like to hold her?" Anthy asked, offering the child to Skuld. She hesitated, as if she'd forgotten what to do with her hands in the eighteen or so years since she'd held Corwin as a babe in arms; but between the two of them, she and Anthy managed the transition smoothly enough. Annabelle made a pleased little sound as she settled into her grandmother's embrace, and the awkward look on Skuld's face dissipated as she accustomed herself to the slight, soft weight. Turning to Gryphon with an expression of wonderment, Skuld said as if surprised, "This is our granddaughter." Gryphon nodded. "Indisputably." "We have a -granddaughter,- you fool," Skuld insisted, as if he wasn't -getting- it. "Yes we do," said Gryphon patiently. "Our first." "Jointly and separately, as it were," Gryphon agreed. Skuld looked back at Annabelle's face, shaking her head in amazement. "Inconceivable," she muttered. "Well, obviously not," said Gryphon, causing Korra to snort involuntarily, Corwin to cough awkwardly, Anthy to giggle, and Utena to stifle a bark of laughter that probably would have startled the baby, then shoot him a reproachful smile. "What?" Skuld wondered distractedly; then she parsed it and groaned. "Uuugh." To Annabelle, she said conversationally, "I can't believe I procreated with a paronomasiac. Still, worked out OK for you, didn't it?" "In my defense, you did make it almost unavoidable," said Gryphon. "The pun or the procreation?" wondered Anthy innocently. "Both," Gryphon replied promptly, drawing another round of similar reactions. "You're really on your game today," Korra remarked, offering him a casual high-five. "I'm only as good as the material I'm given to work with," replied Gryphon modestly. "That explains many things," Korra mused with a judicious nod. Skuld settled into her new frame of reference somewhat as the morning went on, and by afternoon she seemed comfortable with grandmotherhood - or at least to have arrived at a personal definition of what it meant that she could coexist with. Much of this seemed to hinge on relinquishing the baby as seldom as possible and soliciting tips from Jinora and Ikki, who had had the experience numerous times and in multiple generations by this point. True to Corwin's word, the SCM and RTT teams were finished by shortly after lunch, at which point he and Korra rolled up their (metaphorical; Korra was, as virtually always, not actually wearing any) sleeves and got to work straightening up the sun parlor behind them. By midafternoon, they'd completed the job, and the parlor stood reborn as the Mount Weitang project office. With the futon-daybed tucked neatly into a corner and the little conversational grouping of couch and chairs set up alongside it, there was still a cozy and pleasant gathering space available, now with excellent views of the tidily configured workspace at the south end of the room. There, Korra's antique dark-wood drafting table with its built-in weighted-arm lamps stood in the southeast corner, positioned so that the person sitting at it would be looking east toward Republic City. To its right, along the south wall, they'd positioned a long table that would be suitable for managing documents and unrolling drawings for later review. At right angles to the left was a second, shinier, more modern drawing board, the input console for the DesignDesk computer. The computer itself stood behind the console, looking like a big, slightly squat credenza of polished dark wood, ringed by an inset strip of blinkenlights and emblazoned with the sleek SCM logotype. Both drawing boards were faced by tall, rolling chrome stools, such that someone working at either one could easily move to the other at any time. Next to the DesignDesk console was a regular, old-fashioned, Formica-topped metal desk, sporting a blotter, another lamp, and a couple of multi-line telephones. Someone sitting there, in its matching chair, would be able to look up and see the futon, as well as the entrance to the room in the west wall, with ease. Alongside that, a miniature refrigerator for refreshments rounded out the accoutrements, completing the workspace. "There!" said Korra with satisfaction, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm. She climbed onto the stool facing her old drafting table and adjusted the height slightly; then she twirled 540 degrees, ending up with her back to the table, and grinned at Corwin. "Not bad for four hours' work." Corwin sat down in the desk chair and leaned it back at the requisite perilous-looking angle, surveyed the workspace, and nodded. "Nope. Not bad at all." He picked up one of the phones, listened to the dial tone, and asked, "What do you want to bet that if I call Zach, he'll find a way to get a pizza out here?" "No bet," said Korra. From the doorway, Utena laughed. "I think you'll have plenty of chances to test that," she said. "You didn't save any work for me!" Ryo Sato observed, entering the room behind her. Then, to dispel any impression that he was complaining about that, he smiled and added, "Excellent." He held up a big manila envelope, of the kind often used for office correspondence, and added cheerfully, "I haven't been idle, anyway!" Corwin regarded him thoughtfully for a second, then said, "Ryo, why are you wearing a hardhat?" "I'm the general contractor on this job," said Ryo importantly, then knocked on the headgear he wore and added, "The white hardhat's traditional." Frowning thoughtfully, Corwin turned to Korra and asked casually, "Have we picked a contractor for this job yet? I don't remember even issuing an RFQ." Ryo snatched the hardhat from his head and hid it behind him. "Oh, please don't say that where Minmin can hear you," he begged. "She'll insist on submitting a bid as a matter of form and guess who'll have to write it." Korra laughed. "She'd do it, too," she agreed. "How'd you get out here today?" Utena asked. "I didn't hear you coming, so I'm guessing it wasn't by autogyro." "No, no," said Ryo cheerfully. "My darling sister's the only one who dares to fly that contraption, and she had to go to the office today to make up for blowing off work the other day. Well, she didn't really, but she thinks she does." He made a twirling gesture by the side of his head with a forefinger. "She's a little bit crazy." "A little bit?" Corwin wondered, but Ryo ignored him and went on, "So I came out by boat. Little bit of a hike up here from the dock, but I don't mind. Gets the blood flowing." He handed the envelope to Corwin. "Anyway! The first piece of clutter for your desk, son. Couple of prospective routes for your access road here, cost estimates, all that jazz. I've got a crew of EBs ready to start tomorrow if anything in there takes your fancy." Utena quipped with a grin, "You're jumping right into this supposedly recreational project." "It's in my genes, my good Prince Tenjou," said Ryo with a courtly bow. "Even when we Satos are fooling around, we don't fool around." "It was ever so," Korra confirmed with a slightly sentimental little smile. Then, rising, she said, "That reminds me, I'd better go see what Skuld wanted to show me. You guys get started on that, I'll catch up to you in a bit." As she left, Corwin and Ryo were beginning to spread the contents of the envelope out on the long table, heads bowed over contour maps with sketched lines on them, and Utena was going across to join them, interested in spite of her put-on skepticism about how seriously they were all taking the project. Korra found Skuld and Gryphon in the front room with Anthy, Annabelle, and Garnet, taking stock of the trunks and suitcases the two had brought across for Corwin and the Tenjous. "You had something you wanted to show me?" she asked. "Right! Here, check this out." Skuld picked up one of the cases, a metal-sided attache-case-type affair that was a bit fancier and more serious-looking than the rest of the stuff, placed it on the sideboard, and opened it. Nestled inside, in a bed of contoured foam, was a technical-looking gadget whose function Korra could not divine by looking at it. To her it resembled nothing so much as an old-fashioned glass doorknob set into a cunningly machined metal housing, with an arrangement underneath to make it glow prettily. "What is it?" Korra wondered. "It's a metacosmic relay," Skuld replied. "The mate to it is at IPO Headquarters in New Avalon, although really, it could be anywhere. With this installed someplace on this side," she said, patting the metal housing, "your Lens will work across the Veil! Finally you'll have someone to talk to besides the Ancient Masters," she said with a grin. Korra pulled back her bracer to regard the silvery-white face of her Lens for a second, then released it and gave Skuld a sardonic look. "And where was this five years ago? Ten?" she wondered with a hint of mostly-put-on asperity. Skuld had the good grace to go a little red as she replied, "I didn't realize it was a priority!" Korra sighed theatrically. "Ah, well, I guess it shouldn't surprise me. Goddess of the future; not going to have that much of a sense of urgency." Skuld folded her arms and pouted. "You're mean," she said. "See if I bring you toys any more." Korra laughed and half-hugged her, giving her a little shake. "It's great, Skuld. Still a little late, I contend," she added with an upraised finger, "but great. Jinora'll probably want to put it in the council chamber," she mused, "but I'm going to hide it in my place in Senna, where the Lotus Council can't screw with it if they get stupid again." "Oh, speaking of stupidity and councils, I have something less fun for Corwin," said Gryphon. "Wall-E and Eve are scheduled to go before the Turing Board next month, and they named him as one of their advocates." Anthy smiled. "Well, for them, I'm sure he'll be happy to go - despite how much he loves the Turing Board," she added dryly. "Eve was a little worried that he wouldn't want to do it," Skuld remarked, "particularly since they had to miss the second take on the wedding for the preliminaries." "Well, that's just silly," said Anthy. "I know, but she's nervous. Having your sapience judged by a panel of surly experts will do that to a person," Skuld pointed out with a wry eyeroll - not at Anthy, but born of her long-nurtured disdain for the Turing Institute's system of synthetic-sapience classification. Anthy, who had heard the stories of her friend and fellow Duelist Dorothy Wayneright's wrangles with that organization before her own arrival in Midgard, nodded sympathetically. "I don't doubt it," she said. "Tell them both they don't need to worry. He'll be delighted, and we'll make sure he doesn't get so wrapped up in the project that he forgets," she added impishly. Gryphon and Skuld stayed the night, then headed back to New Avalon in the morning, departing via the decorative pond outside the house after breakfast. Once they had gone, Utena and Anthy set to unpacking the things they'd brought over with them, making their temporary lodgings in Jinora's father's old house a home, while Corwin and Korra went to file planning documents for the Weitang access road and supervise the start of its construction, respectively. After lunch, Anthy made certain that Annabelle was set for an hour or so, and then, at Utena's cheerful insistence that they'd be fine, went off by herself to a clear space near the airbenders' (currently vacant) meditation pavilion. One of the several advantages of the bit of svartelven sorcery called The Assassin's Last Surprise was that it meant Anthy could go back to training right away, and she wished to waste no time doing so, having developed something of a work ethic for it since joining Utena in Midgard some years before. Once alone, she summoned her Draconic warstaff, Rosenjaeger, and commenced a series of drills, starting with basic limbering-up exercises and then moving into the more advanced forms. So absorbed was she in her work that she didn't notice she'd acquired an audience, until she turned through one of the spinning countermoves and saw the saffron-robed figure of Jinora standing by a tree at the edge of the clearing, watching her with an enigmatic little smile. "Oh!" said Anthy, completing the maneuver and then whirling the staff to a rest position across her back. "Grandmaster, I didn't hear you approach." "For all that we have a reputation for being a bit boisterous," said Jinora, "we Air Nomads can be very quiet when we want to be. I apologize, I didn't mean to disturb you. It's the first time I've had an opportunity to see you in action. I understand now what Korra meant when she said you move like an airbender." "She's very kind," said Anthy with a self-deprecating smile. "I know my skill is serviceable at best. I came to the Duelist's way quite late in life... but I do enjoy it." "I can tell," said Jinora. "Walk with me for a moment?" "Certainly," said Anthy, dismissing her staff back to the sorcerous pocket space it occupied when not needed. "That's a useful trick," Jinora observed as Anthy fell into step beside her and they walked toward the pavilion together. "One of the many things I'm indebted to Corwin for," Anthy agreed. "You said you became a Duelist late in life," said Jinora. "Because of Utena?" "In a way. As a child I was reasonably fit - a lucky draw from the genetic deck - but not athletically inclined. In my adolescence, I was never -allowed- to study a martial art or take up practice with a weapon." Jinora nodded. "Because of your brother." "Or the thing that had once been my brother, yes," Anthy corrected her mildly. "My whole purpose in Akio's world was to be, by definition, helpless chattel." Jinora's face was grave as she said with a quiet ferocity, "Monstrous." Anthy glanced at her; catching it, she smiled a little wryly. "Does the intensity of my revulsion shock you? After all you've read of our history and our ways in recent days, you should know well that we Air Nomads hate the thought of being confined and stifled more than anything else." "That's true," Anthy conceded, "but it does surprise me a little that you take it so... personally." "You're my friend, Anthy," said Jinora simply. "That makes whatever was done to you personal to me." She touched Anthy's arm gently. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to dredge up old, unhappy, far-off things with my prying." Anthy shook her head. "No, it's all right. In the end... it's part of who I am. I can't escape that. I don't -want- to escape it, because ultimately, it brought me to where I am today." They mounted the short staircase to the meditation pavilion and stood by the railing, looking out at the broad sweep of the Mo Ce Sea, and Anthy gathered her thoughts for a moment before continuing, "Becoming a Duelist after being freed from Akio's dominion was partly an act of rebellion against his memory, I suppose, and partly just a way of preparing for the demands of life as Utena's partner. I was determined not to be a burden or hindrance to her, who had risked and endured so much to set me free." "I find it hard to believe that you could ever be that," said Jinora. "I appreciate that," Anthy replied, touched. They stood in silence for a short while, just looking out at the sea and thinking; then Jinora said, "Nyima has asked that she be allowed to offer to teach you our way of protecting yourself, as though you were an Air Acolyte. Technically she didn't need to ask - she's a master airbender, whom she teaches or doesn't teach is up to her - but she's very young and still a bit uncertain of her place in the world," she added with an indulgent smile. "And it -is- unusual for someone not of our nation to be taught our arts... but Ikki, Meelo, Rohan and I asked ourselves the guiding question that has shown us the way at every crossroads of tradition and modernity in the past, and the answer prompts us to agree. Whether you accept is your own business, but I wanted you to know that when she makes the offer, it's with our full knowledge and consent." Anthy looked genuinely taken aback by this, something Jinora - who had come to appreciate the younger woman's aplomb - took mild pleasure in before telling her earnestly, "I didn't speak lightly when I said you're my friend, Anthy. I hope you understand that. I know your life is far too complex for you to make the commitments required of an Air Acolyte... but these are complex times, and if I've learned anything in my long life, it's that friends like you are too precious to choose blind adherence to convention over them. We made Annabelle a freewoman of our Commonwealth; we would do the same for you, whether Acolyte or airbender or neither." Anthy's green eyes went wide. "I... " she said, then trailed off, not trusting herself to say anything more. "Since you arrived here, you and your family have gladdened the heart of everyone in -my- family," Jinora pressed on. "Your daughter is a spark of joy, and everyone here loves her and her dragon companion; your husband has exceeded even my ambitious hopes and become one of Avatar Korra's best friends in little more than a week; and as for Corwin, well, Corwin is Corwin," she added, her wry smile returning. "You've all become part of our lives here, and as you prepare to spend the next few months with us, you must stop thinking of yourselves as guests." Looking Anthy in the eye, she went on, "Corwin and Korra may well be creating a beautiful haven for the five of you on Mount Weitang, and I look forward to seeing it a little more each day... but I hope you'll always feel that this island is a home for you as well." Anthy continued to find herself uncharacteristically at a loss for a few moments more. Then, quietly, she said simply, "Thank you, Jinora." "You're welcome, Anthy," Jinora replied, and then turned it into a wry little joke by adding, "All of you." Anthy chuckled, the gravity of the moment leavened somewhat. Then, with a curious look, she said, "What is the guiding question?" "Mm? Oh," said Jinora, backtracking in her mind until she found what Anthy was asking about. "The question that my sister and brothers and I have used to shape the path of the Air Commonwealth these many decades? It's a simple one." With a broad smile, she said, "What would Aang do?" Building the road was the work of only a few days. Once it was finished, the fulcrum of the Mount Weitang project shifted back to the sun parlor. There, work on the design of the house itself soon settled into a comfortable rhythm, with Corwin as architect and Korra in the role of project engineer. It became their custom to work separately during the day, Korra in the morning and Corwin in the afternoon, leaving Corwin's mornings for activities with his family and Korra's afternoons for all the manifold duties to which she had to attend as Avatar. In the evenings, after supper, they would take up their stations in the "project office" and look over each other's output from earlier in the day, then tackle whatever collaborative necessities were nearest the top of the stack until bedtime. (Or until, as sometimes happened, they dozed off at the drafting tables, there to remain until discovered and packed off to bed by a third party.) Somewhat to Utena's surprise, Korra and Corwin mostly succeeded in their stated goal of not becoming obsessive about the task. They worked steadily at it, but only on rare occasions did they become completely uninterruptible. It was far from unknown for either or both to take an evening off altogether, in fact, if some other activity came to hand; and even when they were working, the sun parlor's doors generally remained open, inviting other members of the household and the Air Temple community at large to stop by and participate in, or observe, or just be in the same room as the process. Anthy, Utena, Nyima, and Ikki took to playing hands of a curious card game similar to bridge over in the futon corner while the two worked. Occasionally, of course, some task arose requiring enough concentration that they would completely zone out, ignoring everyone else who might happen to be present; and at those times, their visitors would generally smile indulgently at them and leave them to their work. At other times, when the pace of work would slacken for whatever reason, they'd find themselves alone and just wander off down sidetracks of their own, having long, involved conversations about anything and everything and sometimes nothing in particular, taking a certain luxurious pleasure just in being friends of that kind. THURSDAY, MARCH 25 On one such evening toward the end of March, after everyone else had gone to bed, the conversation happened to turn toward Corwin's fellow Valkyrie, and from there to the topic of Valhalla generally. "Oh, that reminds me," said Corwin. "You're actually cleared to -see- this now... " He rezzed up his omni-tool and started riffling through holographic thumbnail images, asking as he did so, "Remember when I was 10 and you took me to meet Aang?" Korra nodded. "Uh huh... " "I asked him why he was a kid, and he basically said 'cause he felt like it." She nodded again, confirming that she was still with him, and he went on, "Valhalla sort of works that way too." "Yeah, I remember Toph mentioned that at the wedding," said Korra. Corwin found the image he was after and locked it in, then looked up and grinned. "Well," he said, "occasionally this can cause... confusion." So saying, he made a quick gesture and expanded the photo he'd selected to a full-size display; it resolved in the air above his right palm, hovering there like a physical object, and he turned it around so that it was facing Korra. It took her a few seconds' consideration to realize what was depicted there, because she was coming at it without much context. The picture showed a group of people in a room she didn't recognize, all dark timbers and white-plastered walls - not a style one tended to see in Diqiu. It was evidently a candid snapshot, not a posed portrait; there were two figures more or less centered, and another pair off to one side, some distance in the background, having evidently just entered through a door that stood open behind them. With the setting processed, Korra recognized the central figure in the foreground immediately. To her surprise, it was Aang, as he appeared in historical artworks and as she'd seen him that time in the Spirit World: a boy of about twelve, in a young Air Nomad's typical traveling clothes. He was wide-eyed and red-faced with a combination of astonishment and embarrassment. The second person she recognized was Toph Beifong, looking sixteenish, as she had at Corwin's wedding revels, but dressed in the gold and green of the Earth Kingdom instead of the blue and black Pillar's Page uniform Korra had seen her in on that occasion. She was pointing, not quite at Aang, though that had clearly been her intent, and had been caught in the middle of what must've been a titanic peal of laughter - her head thrown back, mouth fully open, eyes closed, all her teeth showing. Close behind her stood a man Korra realized, with a sudden shock, was Fire Lord Zuko, more or less as he appeared in the many portraits of him as a young man which were to be found around Republic City. His scarred face wore an expression of startled amusement. With one hand he had reached past Toph's shoulder and taken hold of her wrist, evidently to correct her aim. That left the other figure in the foreground, and Korra puzzled over her for several seconds. She was a beautiful young woman, maybe twenty or twenty-five, and from her mode of dress, her skin tone, and her distinctive hairstyle, she was unmistakably of the Southern Water Tribe; but beyond that, Korra was momentarily stumped. She considered the mysterious woman's expression, which was very complicated. She looked surprised, amused, and a little embarrassed all at once, but above all of that, her sky-blue eyes were full of what could only be a pure and radiant delight. And it was -that,- the eyes, that made it all suddenly click into place. This woman was no stranger to her - far, far from it. Korra had seen those eyes many times before. Both in person, set in a face much older than the one in the photo, and in other photographs - photographs depicting a dear friend, but taken many years before Korra was born. "That... that's Katara!" she said. "But - when was this taken? -Where- was it taken?" "Valhalla," Corwin told her. "Have you ever looked for Aang in the Spirit World and not been able to find him? Well... " He shrugged, smiling slightly. "There's a back door." He indicated the picture. "That was taken not long after you introduced us. Aang, uh... sort of forgot to change clothes before he went over the next time." Grinning, he added, "Like I said... occasional confusion." Korra gazed at the photo for a long moment, a mix of positive and negative emotions flowing plainly across her face. Then, blinking hard, she said quietly, "I need a drink." Corwin startled her at that moment by reaching into his omni- tool's holofield with his free hand and plucking out the photo, which she had taken for a projected image. With a gentle smile, he handed it to her - it was some stiff, glossy material, like heavy cardstock - and went to the minifridge to get her a bottle of lychee juice. She drank it without taking her eyes from the picture, then asked Corwin, "How does he do it?" After a moment's consideration, Corwin replied, "Well, it's kind of cosmologically weird, and I'm not the best guy to ask about the details, but basically, just as Diqiu is sort of a... a pocket in the Midgard material plane, what you call the Spirit World is a fold in the astral. It's not technically -in- Asgard, the same way where we are now isn't the same place as Zipang, but there are places where you can get from one to the other if you know what you're doing. If you don't, you'll never know the difference." "So, like getting around in the Spirit World generally," Korra said, putting the picture down on the desk with one more lingering glance. Corwin nodded. "Only more so. It's actually a lot easier the first time to get from Valhalla to the Spirit World than it is the other way around. Some of the more astrally savvy Einherjar from Diqiu spend more time in the Spirit World than Valhalla - it's more like home, I suppose. The first time Aang made the trip, he had to be guided over by one of them." Korra looked intrigued. "Who? Not Katara, obviously." Corwin chuckled. "Heh, no. Have you met General Iroh? Zuko's uncle, I mean, not the one who was Fire Lord. I -know- you've met him." "Ha!" said Korra, looking delighted. "Of course I know Uncle Iroh. He was with Aye-Aye and me when the universe ended. I didn't realize... " She trailed off, looking thoughtful, then blinked as something clicked together in her head. "Oh. -Oh!- -That's- what he meant about 'Expansion Franchise'! And all this time, I thought he was talking about the Jasmine Dragons in Zipang!" She shook her head with a wry smile. "Clever, clever man." Seeing that Corwin was giving her a faintly puzzled look, Korra explained, "We have tea in his tea house in the Spirit World every so often. It's got good memories for me. I didn't know he was going back and forth, though. I thought he was just... " She shrugged. "A departed soul, like Aang and our predecessors. I guess I never really thought about it. I'm a little surprised that's allowed." "Oh, sure," said Corwin. "All the regular afterlives are linked like that if you know the way. It's coming back to the -material- world without authorization that attracts Forseti's Helhounds." "That's a bad thing, I take it?" "-Very- bad thing. Basically the -worst- thing. I'd... rather not get into that right now," Corwin said with an uncomfortable look. By then, Korra had moved past being curious about the procedural niceties of the afterlife for the moment, anyway. Her own expression settling somewhere between hope and trepidation, she asked slowly, "Can... are you allowed to tell me more about who's there?" "I wasn't, until the other day," Corwin said, "but now... if you feel you're ready, I'll tell you anything you want to know." He held up a cautioning hand. "But trust me... these things are best taken on a little at a time." Korra considered that, then nodded slowly. "OK," she said. "We don't have to go into detail right now. Everything at its own pace, right?" She smiled, a touch ruefully, and added, "Man, look at us, willya. All grown up and responsible." Corwin chuckled. "Or at least very convincingly faking it." With a laugh, Korra agreed, "Or that." Then, sobering, she went on, "For right now, just tell me this much, if you think it's fitting. If I visited... would I be disappointed?" Corwin regarded her thoughtfully for a second, then gave her a little smile and shook his head. "I don't think you would, no." The young Air Acolyte named Sita happened to be passing the house just then, on her way from evening exercises to bed; noticing the sun parlor all lit up, she decided to stop in and say good evening. It was the neighborly thing to do, after all. She entered the sun parlor to find Avatar Korra and her friend from Outside... having some kind of -moment.- It wasn't particularly odd to see the Avatar embracing someone; she did that kind of thing all the time. She was a very huggy sort of person. She usually wasn't both smiling -and- weeping while she did it, though, and Sita found the combination both moving and oddly unnerving. Grown-ups are so weird, she thought as she slipped quietly back out of the house and took herself off to bed. One of the things Korra had to do in the afternoons was make good on her offer to teach Utena a thing or two about fighting empty-handed. Every day from two to four, out in the grassy space by the ba gua circle in good weather or in one of the Air Temple's dojos in bad, they worked on foundational techniques. Korra's aim was not to teach Utena any one particular style, but rather to draw from all the various ways of fighting she knew (which was most of them, in Diqiu at least) to develop a free-form, improvisational technique that she thought would work for Utena's wide-open approach to living. The basic framework was that of the form underlying firebending, which was a martial art very like one of the flavors of kung fu from old Earth, with the maneuvers reliant on firebending's enhanced reach stripped out as superfluous. From there, Korra layered in different elements from all over her world - "mute" versions of the other bending base styles, non-bender techniques from Kyoshi Island and the eastern Earth Kingdom, and less formal street fighting techniques from here and there and everywhere, some of them learned by experiencing them from the wrong end in clashes with Republic City's Triads. For two hours a day, the two women worked and sweated together, usually spending the first hour on instruction and the second sparring. The daily ritual - particularly the second phase - called up pleasant memories for Utena of herself and Kaitlyn in their school days, keeping their swordsmanship skills at their peak and occasionally drawing appreciative little crowds. That happened more rarely here, as anyone who would be inclined to gather and watch usually had stuff of their own to be doing, and authority figures to come and chivvy them along toward doing it instead of gawking at the Avatar and her friend. Of course, there was -one- important difference; back in the WPI and DSM days, her afternoon workouts with Kate had not involved the occasional presence of a gleeful infant and a slightly fretful dragon, one lashed to her back and the other anchored watchfully on her shoulder. That was a bit weird, but at the same time oddly gratifying. When Annabelle wasn't with Utena and Korra, she often found herself with Anthy and Nyima instead, and so racked up a quite unusual amount of dojo time (even though both pairs usually did their work outdoors, weather permitting, and not in actual dojos) for a newborn in her first few weeks of life. As Corwin had predicted, she seemed to enjoy the experience, and the company, enormously. Though the book said that an infant so young should not reasonably be expected to have much in the way of considered opinions, it seemed to all involved that Annabelle developed her first particular attachments to people other than her parents during these sessions. They could have sworn, documented unlikelihood or no, that she showed more than a baby's standard zen acceptance of Others when it came to Utena and Anthy's training partners - something Nyima, in particular, took a great but quiet pride in. As for Corwin, he filled his days with a combination of the tasks due from all new fathers - undertaken, for the most part, in a spirit of cheerful collaboration - and endeavoring, as time and energy permitted, to show Utena and Anthy more of the world he was, himself, getting reacquainted with after so long away. By month's end, he would have been hard-pressed to name a time in his life when he had been happier with the way things were going. There was only one nagging imperfection, one little thing that seemed out of balance - and as the new month began, he decided that he'd given that thing enough time in which to sort itself out. Since it hadn't, he'd have to take a morning and see to it himself. THURSDAY, APRIL 1 "You know," said Corwin conversationally, "when you said you were going to go off into the wild and live like a dragon, I didn't think you meant it quite this literally." As he spoke, he unstrapped his Cirrus J-5 jetpack's control modules from his hands and slipped them into his side pockets, then tugged off the heavy gauntlets he'd worn underneath them. These he stuffed under the front flap of his cavalry-style jacket, freeing his hands to unstrap and remove his flight helmet. That exposed his head to the fierce, gusting winds of the mountaintop on which he stood, but on the other hand, it meant he no longer had to hold his neck rigid to keep those winds from grabbing the rudder and twisting his head off. Then, turning to look back the way he'd just come, Corwin added, "You've got a nice view up here, though, I'll give you that." Nall lowered his head and grunted. "Not many people would just jetpack up to a dragon's lair and start critiquing the place," he observed. Corwin shrugged. "Not many people grew up with the dragon in question spending so much of his time perched on their heads," he replied. "... OK, I guess you've kind of got me there," Nall conceded. With a sigh, he lay down, abandoning his half-hearted attempt to loom and be intimidating, then asked wearily, "Something I can do for you?" "Man, what's eating you?" Corwin inquired without preamble. He looked around for a moment, then stuck his helmet on a conveniently- about-head-sized rock before ambling around to Nall's lee side. "At first we figured you were just fooling around, but you've been up here for almost two weeks now. We're all starting to worry a little." Nall made a sound that was half growl, half grumble. "It's personal," he said, but Corwin wasn't having any of that. "Nall," he said. "C'mon. This is me you're talking to. Something's -happened,- something that's taken you to this weird and uncomfortable place, and I'm not talking about this mountain. I didn't come all the way up here for you to blow me off with 'it's personal'. Not after all we've been through." The dragon scowled at him, then sighed. "You really want to know?" he asked. "You might end up wishing you didn't." "Lay it on me," said Corwin at once. Nall weighed the matter a moment longer, then relented and said, "OK, you asked for it," and told him. All of it. How he had been called away from Corwin and Utena's pre-wedding party to deal with an unfolding crisis within his then-girlfriend Umi Ryuuzaki's family on Hyeruul. How the aftermath of that crisis had gone south in not one but two unexpected and painful ways. How he and Umi had somehow managed to break up in the wake of a mutual triumph... ... And how he had been forced by circumstance, custom, and the sheer implacable demands of self-preservation to kill his cousin, the dragon Naxnehaaz, in single combat above the mountains of Hyeruul. Corwin absorbed this intelligence in silence, his face going grave and contemplative for a few long moments once his draconic companion had finished talking. Then, slowly, he observed, "And you kept this from... well, from -everyone,- but particularly from me and Utena. You and the other Rune Knights too." "It was your wedding, man!" Nall protested. "It didn't seem appropriate. And after that... well... " He sighed. "Look, there's a lot of... -stuff-... involved in being a dragon that I never had to deal with before... before Nax. Stuff you can't help with. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, you're part of the problem." Corwin arched an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?" "Yeah, I knew that was the wrong way to say that," Nall grumbled. "Except... it's true. I grew up barely ever -seeing- another dragon. I knew our language, knew about our history and culture and stuff, because of the Dreaming, but once I came out of the shell I saw my own kind maybe once or twice a year. I wasn't -prepared- for being a dragon to just up and get so -real- on me. And it's got me thinking - thinking really hard - about what it means to be what I am. About -who- I am, in a way I never had to before." Corwin gave him a sadly thoughtful look. "And I'm the cause of that," he said. "You didn't grow up a dragon because of me." "I'm not -blaming- you," Nall insisted. "That's not what this is about. It's not even about regretting that I didn't, exactly. I mean, we've had a lot of good times. And without even realizing it most of the time, we were doing something really important. But now it's something I have to deal with, and... this is how I'm dealing with it." He gave a draconic shrug. "Because I have to now, and I don't know how else to do it." "Alone," said Corwin. "Well, not entirely," Nall replied, sounding faintly awkward now. "Lhakpa's... helping." "Many people have noticed," said Corwin dryly. If Nall could have blushed in his full dragon form, Corwin was reasonably sure he would have as he ducked his head and drew a haphazard line on the ground with a foreclaw. "Yeah, well... it's not like that," he said. "Mostly. She really is helping a lot. You'd be surprised how much insight she has. It's... calming." He shook his head. "I just can't say anything here that doesn't sound like a euphemism, can I." "Not really," Corwin agreed. "You said people have noticed. Is she in trouble with the elders?" "I don't think so," said Corwin. "I'm pretty sure Jinora knows where she goes when nobody can find her, but she's keeping her own counsel about it so far, if so. Maybe she thinks you're a worthwhile project for a young airbender," he added with a dry little smirk. Nall snorted, amused in spite of himself. "I'm not sure I'd put that past her," he said. "Has she mentioned," Corwin asked a little too casually, "that she was a total asshole to Nyima a little while ago?" "Yes," said Nall heavily. "You probably won't believe this, but she's sorry about that." "It's not my business to believe it or not," said Corwin a trifle stiffly. "She might consider mentioning that to Nyima at some point, however." "I'm working on it," said Nall. "We're... OK, look, I guess we're -both- sort of works in progress right now, all right? But we're trying. Just... give us time. Give us space. Please. OK?" Corwin regarded his lifelong friend for a few seconds, then sighed and got to his feet. "We're still going to worry," he said. "I appreciate that," Nall replied. "Really. And I'll keep you posted. There's going to be a stage of the process where we need to talk about some stuff, I think, but I'm not there yet." Corwin nodded. "OK. Whatever you need, just let me know. You don't have to be alone -all- the time." Picking up his helmet, he added wryly, "I guess this means you're probably not coming to the Ferrets' home opener tomorrow." "What time?" Nall wondered. "Doors open at 6:30," said Corwin. He pulled on the helmet and fastened it, then put on his gauntlets and started arranging the control units. "Main event's at 7:45. The usual." Nall nodded. "I'll think about it," he said. "Hey, Corwin?" "Yeah?" Corwin replied. "Thanks for checking in," said Nall. Corwin gazed at him for a second or two more, his eyes hidden by the reflective visor of his helmet, then nodded. "You're welcome, Nall," he said. "Remember what I said." "I will. See you." "Bye," said Corwin, and then he engaged his J-5's main thrust and rocketed away from Nall's mountaintop retreat. The dragon watched him go, then lay back down and heaved a mighty sigh. FRIDAY, APRIL 2 Shiro Shinobi Arena was packed and roaring on the first day of the Major League Bending regular season - much more so than it had been for the exhibition game Utena had caught, and Corwin had found himself playing in, a couple of weeks ago. There had been a good crowd on hand for that, but tonight the place was absolutely -rammed,- standing room only and not much of that, and there was a whole different intensity to the energy in the room. It reminded Utena of nothing so much as the Toronto Raiderdome just before Game 7 of the 2404 World Series. Here at the other end of the season, the excitement was all about potential, not ultimate outcomes, but the level of it was about the same. She reflected on that day as she and Corwin made their way to their seats. That was, she was faintly shocked to realize, before she met him. Nowadays she often had trouble imagining that there had been such a time, but there it was. There'd been two whole terms - half a school year - when (apart from MegaZone) she knew no one at all in Midgard outside of WPI. Utena didn't much like to look back at those days; in many ways, they had been the darkest of her life. True, they'd contained the seeds of her eventual deliverance, but she hadn't known that at the time. Apart from a few bright and precious moments, she'd only known the heartbreak until Christmastime. Game 7 had been one of those moments (in fact, the whole Toronto trip had been stuffed with them), and she had no qualms about calling it to mind now. They weren't heading for the bleachers this time, but down front, to one of the courtside boxes where the season ticket holders sat. This was much like being in the regular stands - they were still down in the great bowl of the arena, in the thick of it all - but with better seats and smartly uniformed waiters to handle concession runs. Utena approved of this arrangement, and it was with a smile that was part nostalgia and part plain enjoyment of the occasion that she took the seat Minami Sato was holding for her down front. "Evening, Prince Tenjou," said Ryo with a courtly bow from the far side of his sister. "You're looking divine as always." Utena thought that was pushing the boat out a little, since she was dressed in nothing fancier than some old Martian Army cargo shorts and Corwin's KARASU 99 Fire Ferrets sweater (which served her fairly well as an overcoat), but she smiled and thanked him graciously all the same. It was hard not to be gracious with Ryo, even when his charm went a little over the top, because it was always done with such deliberate, self-mocking wryness - not -irony-, exactly, that would've been tedious, but with a winking acknowledgement that he couldn't help being a little silly. He reminded her slightly of Devlin Carter, with whom, she suspected, he would probably get on like a house afire. Corwin slipped into his own seat beside her, checking his watch as he did so. "Hmm, just in time for the pregame show," he said, powering up his omni-tool. "Ooh, what's that?" Minami inquired eagerly, leaning across Utena to get a better look. "I'll show you later," Corwin said, waving her back to her seat. "I bet you will," said Utena, elbowing him. Corwin gave her a Vulcan-style I-beg-your-pardon eyebrow, which got giggles out of both the women to his right, and then went back to what he was doing; a moment later, the tool's holographic interface fell back to passive mode and the audio feed from the Republic Television Network gently overlaid the rest of the sounds around them. "... to MLB on RTN! I'm Hitomi Hattori. With me as always is ace earthbender and two-time Western League MVP Kuo Renli." "Always a pleasure!" "And on my right, joining us here for opening day at Shiro Shinobi Arena, a guest I'm sure requires no introduction. Welcome back to the press box, Avatar Korra." "Thanks, Hitomi. Good to be back. How was your offseason?" Corwin sat back in his seat and smiled, listening to Korra chat and banter with the two regular commentators. He'd always enjoyed watching and/or hearing her work a room, be it just a couple of people in a broadcast booth or, on one memorable occasion, the United Republic Senate. "(How come you're not not pulling in the video feed too?)" Utena wondered, leaning to murmur in his ear. "(Do you really want me to have to explain how I'm doing that to Minami right here and now while she sits in your lap?)" Corwin replied dryly. "('Cause that's what happens when I bust out the full-motion holograms, tellin' you right now.)" "(Hmm, good point. I guess we'd better skip that for right now. I wouldn't mind so much,)" she added with a mischievous grin, "(but Ryo might be embarrassed... )" "(You're in a playful mood tonight,)" said Corwin with a wry little smile. "(Why shouldn't I be?)" Utena replied with a carefree toss of her hair. "(It's Friday!)" Most citizens of Republic City would probably have been surprised to learn that there was even one television on Air Temple Island. Such was the Air Nomads' reputation for reflective and scholarly pursuits that many people assumed such a thing would be strictly forbidden in their central enclave. It seemed like entirely too worldly a thing for them to be on board with. In fact, there were -two- TV sets on the island. The smaller of the two belonged to Master Meelo, and wasn't connected to an antenna. He affected to disdain broadcast programming and used his personal set only to watch old action films, the world's most extensive collection of which he happened to own on Moverdisc. Sometimes one or more of his siblings or Korra would watch with him, and on rare occasions he might invite a favored student or two to join the viewing audience, but for the most part this was a solitary pursuit (which Meelo insisted was a form of meditation, not that anyone believed him). The other stood in one corner of the large room at the end of the downstairs corridor of the ladies' quarters annex, which since time almost immemorial had been Avatar Korra's study. It was there, rather than in her small, spartan bedroom on the second floor, where she received official visitors; there that she maintained most of her extensive personal library; and there where she had written the bulk of most of the several books to her credit. So it was there, at around seven o'clock, that those denizens of the island who were interested in Major League Bending gathered to watch the 2410 season opener. There were normally just a couple of armchairs in the part of the room that wasn't given over to Korra's desk, but it was a simple matter for Ikki and Nyima to haul in a sofa from the common room and rearrange things accordingly. Now they, Anthy (with Garnet and Annabelle, naturally), Meelo, and a handful of the youngsters all arranged themselves with snacks and beverages to hand, preparing for game time. After the flashy "MLB on RTN" introductory title graphics, the first view they were all treated to was a long-lens shot of the press box overlooking the court, taken by one of the cameras whose normal job was to show the action itself. There, through the opened windows, three cheerful figures could be seen sitting at the lower-deck commentary desk, surrounded by monitors and microphones, each wearing a pair of bulky studio headphones. Despite the paraphernalia, all were smartly dressed. "Good evening, bending fans, and welcome to MLB on RTN!" said the smiling young woman in the middle. "I'm Hitomi Hattori. With me as always is ace earthbender and two-time Western League MVP Kuo Renli." "Always a pleasure!" said the green-clad, middle-aged figure to her left with a beaming grin. "And on my right, joining us here for opening day at Shiro Shinobi Arena, a guest I'm sure requires no introduction," said Hitomi. "Welcome back to the press box, Avatar Korra." Korra, neat and tidy in her best double-breasted tunic and high opera gloves but looking cool and relaxed with Pabu XVII in his team jacket on her shoulder, returned the play-by-play woman's smile and replied, "Thanks, Hitomi. Good to be back. How was your offseason?" "She didn't introduce Pabu," Garnet mused. "That's just rude." "To be fair, he probably isn't going to have much to offer in the way of commentary," Ikki observed as she settled herself on the couch to Anthy's right. Meelo nodded agreement, assuming his traditional place - stretched out face-down on the floor in front of the couch, chin propped on hands, like a little boy. "His understanding of the mechanics of the game is sketchy at best," he said. "Do you have everything you need, Anthy?" asked Nyima. "I'm fine, Nyima, do sit down," said Anthy, patting the cushion to her left. "You know," said Sita thoughtfully from the sofa arm next to Ikki, "if -I- had two husbands, and they both left me at home with the baby while they went to a game, I don't think I'd be so cheerful." In front of the couch, Tenzin and Gyatso glanced at each other, then ostentatiously looked away, drawing a little snort of laughter from Garnet. "It's traditional," Anthy told her, smiling cheerfully past Ikki at the young Air Acolyte. "Friday evenings have been Corwin and Utena's time to themselves since long before Annabelle came along." Settling back, she turned the smile to her infant daughter and added, as if to her, "Although I did have to -remind- them of that fact before I could convince them to go tonight." Just before the start of the first supporting match, the group in the Satos' box seats was joined by a couple of late-arriving figures, excuse-me'ing their way down the row from the aisle. Both Nall and Lhakpa looked a bit awkward, as if neither were entirely certain of the welcome they could expect; Lhakpa, in particular, hung back a bit and only reluctantly met Corwin's eyes. For his part, though, Corwin was determined not to be the one to bring the occasion down, and he greeted her pleasantly enough; and Utena surprised Nall by rising and edging past her husband to give him a full and proper hug. "We miss you," she told him quietly. "I hope you're finding what you need. If there's anything we can do... " "I... thanks," said Nall, returning the embrace. "I'll let you know. Honest. Right now... we're working on it." Utena let him go, stepped back, and gave him a slightly sad smile, then reached past him and tagged Lhakpa's shoulder before returning to her seat. Still looking mildly sheepish, Nall took the seat next to Corwin, with Lhakpa on the other side of him; nothing more was said of the matter, because within moments the PA crackled to life and the pregame ceremonies commenced. By tacit agreement, the four put other considerations aside for the duration and concentrated on having a good time... which they proceeded to do, without reservation. SATURDAY, APRIL 3 The next morning, no one was very surprised to find that the Tribune's Section 4 lead photo showed Korra, Corwin, and Utena during the final round of the previous evening's headline match, caught in an instant that had been immortalized on TV the night before. As the Fire Ferrets' team principal, Korra had recused herself from commentary on the final bout, reporting instead to the stands to take it in with the others in the Satos' courtside box. (Given that full Opening Day crowd management protocols were in effect already, The Hat was not required.) The photograph in question showed her seated, still with Pabu on her shoulder, between Corwin and Utena - or at least she -would- have been seated between them, if there had been room for that. Since they were in the box seats and not the bleachers, however, and since the arena had been absolutely jam-packed when she arrived, she was actually more sort of perched on the shared armrest between their seats. In the moment captured in the picture, she had her left hand on Corwin's head for stability, her spread fingers pressing furrows into his unruly black hair, and was pointing at something on the court with her other hand. Corwin was giving her an amused, sidelong "yes?" sort of look, while both Korra and Utena were shouting at someone out of shot, both their faces showing comically similar irritation. They were, if Corwin recalled correctly, both yelling at the ref about a call with which neither had agreed. It was the kind of snapshot Section 4 would have had a bit of a field day with, not so long before, given that Korra was practically sitting in Corwin's lap and his wife was right there next to her, evidently agreeing with whatever sentiment she was voicing. The copy beneath, however, was much more circumspect than it would've been a couple of weeks before. Section 4's editor, it appeared, had taken his chastisement to heart, and the section was now at pains not to speculate about anything. The article merely noted that "the Avatar and friends" had appeared to enjoy the game very much and left it at that. "Well, there," said Korra with an air of satisfaction. "Maybe Cheong's finally got that guy trained." She regarded the picture thoughtfully for a second, then took out her gearPhone and dialed. "Hey, Cheong. Yeah, that's a lot better, nice work. Listen, can you score a good print of the photo from today's? We'll send it to Kate. Thanks." She paused, listening. "Yep, soon as we're done with breakfast. Right. OK. Thanks." Closing the phone, she grinned around the table, then said, "OK! You guys about ready? Minami should be here any minute." "You're awfully chipper for seven-forty-five in the morning," Corwin observed dryly as he, Korra, Utena, and Anthy (the last with Annabelle aboard and Garnet and Makoto flying alongside) left the dining hall. Korra shrugged, still grinning. "I'm on vacation," she said. "Trying to figure out how long it's been since I was last in my old hometown. Glacier Spirits the year before -last-, I think. I didn't even make it for my own birthday last year because of White Lotus shenanigans." She looked momentarily annoyed, her jaw threatening to jut pugnaciously, and then shook it off and grinned again. "But not this time!" she added, then put thumb and little finger to the corners of her mouth and whistled. Niri came bounding across the courtyard at her call, already saddled up and sporting a pair of bulky leather panniers. Korra caught hold of the polar bear dog's harness as she approached and swung with praticed ease into the saddle, then leaned forward to scruffle her ears, remarking, "You can't wait to get home either, can you girl?" At the pier, they found a small mound of luggage and a little group of Air Nomads waiting for them. Utena, who was still getting used to Grandmaster Jinora's slightly mercurial moods, was a little bemused at the formality of her sendoff - a person would think they were going away for a year or more, not twenty days - but Anthy received it with equal gravity, leavened only by the slightly conspiratorial twinkle in both women's eyes as they exchanged airbender bows. "Vayu and I are off today as well - we have business at the Southern Air Temple," Nyima told them after her own round of bows. "We'll meet you in Senna for the festival." "Sounds like a plan," said Utena with a grin. "Does this mean it's time for you to start getting your -nomad- on?" "Not quite yet," said Nyima, shaking her head. With a hard-to- read little smiling glance at her great-grandmother, she added, "This is more of an errand." "Well, I guess all we need now is the guest of honor," said Korra wryly, "and we can - " She was interrupted by the cry of a steam whistle as a sleek, low-slung launch swept around the point and into the harbor, speeding up to the quayside with a merry chuffing and a streamer of white smoke from its one rakishly angled stack. At the controls, Minami Sato gave a big overhead wave as she drew alongside, expertly throttling back so that the boat slid gracefully to a halt in the right place. "Ahoy, travelers!" she cried as Tenzin and Gyatso scrambled to tie up the launch. "Is everyone ready to go? Adventure awaits on the high seas!" The four additional adults, polar bear dog, and luggage made for a fairly tight squeeze in the launch's cockpit, and though Corwin was pleased to see the boat again - he had pleasant memories of a years-ago coastal trip with Minami and Ryo aboard this very vessel, the Sato clan's ancestral steam launch Agni VI - he was also looking a little dubious as they cast off and pulled away from the pier with another cheery blast of the whistle. "If you don't mind my saying so, Minami," he observed, "the Agni VI seems a little small for our purposes today." Minami laughed. "What's the matter, Corwin, not up for a 7,000- mile ocean voyage in a 25-foot open boat with seven of your best friends?" Before he could answer, she went on, "Not to worry - this is only a short trip," then swept the launch into a long arc around the southern tip of Air Temple Island. As they cleared the headland, their destination swung into view, and Minami couldn't keep a grin from spreading across her face. It was a ship, sleek and purposeful-looking, with a sharp bow flowing back with a graceful curve to a square stern. Utena, considering her with the eye of an enthusiast of such matters, marked her just a bit longer than the Valiant, stem to stern - around 420 feet. For about half her length, starting just abaft the tallest part of the superstructure, the hull broadened into a trimaran configuration, with a slim and graceful sponson riding on either side of the narrow central hull before they merged some way above the waterline. Hull and superstructure were both smoothly finished, with many flush-fitted windows - the whole area abaft the bridge seemed to be glazed, almost like a greenhouse - and few of the exposed gribblies customary on the other large surface ships Utena had seen at Republic City's docks. Though evidently unarmed and painted a clean, shining white above the plimsoll line (and bright scarlet below), she had the unmistakably lean and aggressive look of a warship about her - and what appeared to be a flight deck, spreading out to the full width of the trimaran hull section abaft the superstructure. Her grin widening further, Minami steered the Agni VI around to the bigger vessel's stern, where a large barn-door-like hatch stood open in the hull plating; extended from this and awaiting them was an elaborate mechanical contraption which, Utena realized as they approached it, was a sort of davit. Below the opening, bold Kokugo and Standard characters spelled out the ship's name and home port: M/V MIRAI FUTURE CITY Seeing this, Corwin laughed. Minami gave him a querying glance as she expertly steered the Agni VI into the space beneath the arms of the davit. "I have a cousin called Mirai on my mother's side," he explained. "Oh!" said Minami. "Right. I remember you mentioned her at Grandmother's funeral. That's who this one's named after." Corwin nodded. "I figured." As the davit crew squared away the launch, one of them placed a gangway for the boat party to disembark by. Minami gestured her guests across, then stepped lightly over herself, offering her thanks to the crew as she did so. Briskly and efficiently, they set to securing the Agni VI in a permanent berth off to one side. They were on a catwalk halfway up one side wall of a cavernous room, the full width of the triple hull and a good two stories high - part cargo hold, part hangar deck, part Utena wasn't really sure what. Up forward, an autogyro stood with its rotors folded on a giant elevator platform, ready to be lifted to deck level. The ceiling was criscrossed with tracked cranes, reminding her of the big rooms in Corwin's underground workshop in New Avalon. A couple of big rectangular objects, like shipping containers but of an unfamiliar size, were secured to the sprawling floor with spacious aisles between them, like houses in a miniature neighborhood. With an expansive gesture that took it all in, Minami declared with a wry little grin, "Welcome aboard my little boat. If you'll follow me, I'll give you the tour. Don't worry about your things; the crew will take care of everything." "This is a -yacht?-" Utena inquired as Minami led them along the catwalk toward a hatch in the forward bulkhead. "She looks more like a warship." "She is a warship," said Minami. "Or, well, she's meant to be. The Mirai is a prototype - the first of a new class of coastal patrol frigate we're hoping will be the next big thing in maritime security." Utena thought that over for a second, then wondered, "Security from what? I mean, in a world with only six countries... " "Pirates," Korra put in. "Remember when we first met, I mentioned why we missed connections when you guys were on Zipang last year?" Minami nodded. "Pirates, commerce raiders, and other rogue actors. The six nations are at peace right now, and have been for quite some time - thanks to the diligence of our Avatar," she added with an overcooked bow that got a blushing grin and a dismissive wave from Korra, "but there are a lot of little islands in the Mo Ce and the archipelago of the eastern Fire Nation. Every now and again some loonbat will get the idea to set up a little renegade kingdom out there and start picking off freighters in the straits. The Fire Navy and the United Forces do what they can, but there's not a lot of room to maneuver among those islands. That's where the Mirai class comes in - they're fast, agile, flexibly configurable, and economical to operate, but powerful enough to make any would-be pirate prince think twice about his career plans." "Soooo, that'd be the sales pitch, then," said Garnet. Minami grinned. "Of course," she said. "You're not the first tour group I've explained all this to. We used the prototype as a demonstrator until we got our first order from the United Forces. They requested a few changes, so the production vessels are slightly different - different enough that we use the first of those as the demonstration ship now. That left the Mirai at a bit of a loose end, so I had her refitted as an... " She paused, both to consider her phrasing and to hold the hatch for her guests, then stepped through it behind them, closed it, and led the way up the passage. "... executive transport," she concluded. The corridor they were in now was considerably less utilitarian than the hold-cum-hangar deck they'd just left; it was carpeted, for one thing, and featured tasteful wood paneling on the walls. The lighting was bright but cheerful, not harsh or industrial. "Remind me to become an executive," Garnet quipped as Minami led the party down a transverse corridor and into a beautifully decorated area that put them in mind of a stately home's great hall, complete with grand staircase. "It has its perks," Minami told the little dragon, "but it's more work than you might think. In this form, the Mirai still demonstrates what this hull design can do, but heads of state and government ministers tend to find this configuration more attractive than the military version," she added with a wink. "So she's not -just- a toy. And she's not the biggest yacht in the world, believe it or not. Some insane Earth Kingdom jennamite mine owner has -that- honor, his is something like 600 feet long. I saw an article about it in Life at Sea magazine once." She made a face. "Ghastly." The tour took nearly a quarter of an hour, during which time Minami showed them what amounted to a miniaturized version of the amenities one might have found on one of the great Atlantic liners of twentieth-century Earth. Utena knew this because Gryphon had a mild fascination with the subject, and several large books in his library back in New Avalon concerned them. The decor was a little sleeker and more modern, admittedly, but the attention to detail and the unashamed luxury of it all were very similar. Everything was presented with style and taste - no expense spared, but none wasted either. This was a pleasure cruiser with a purpose, Sato style. They touched briefly on the game room, library, dining room, and other shared amenities - there was a dojo, naturally, as well as a full-service banya - before taking a quick swing through the spacious, well-equipped staterooms, and then up to the bridge. This was a more businesslike space, but still beautifully appointed, its every fixture gleaming. There were four people on duty: two officers, a comms operator, and a helmswoman. Minami introduced her guests graciously to all four personnel: Captain Xiaobai, a compact, grey-haired woman; her executive officer, First Lieutenant Zhi, a tall, thin, humorless-looking middle-aged man; red-faced and cheerful Radioman Harbin; and petite, smiling Quartermaster Yumi. "It is a great honor to have you traveling with us, Avatar!" Lt. Zhi barked stiffly before anyone else had a chance to speak. Slightly to Utena's surprise - and to her immediate approval - Yumi didn't even bother to suppress a giggle at the officer's stonefaced seriousness. He shot her a millisecond glare, but otherwise said and did nothing about it; Anthy could have sworn she saw the captain hide a little smile behind one white-gloved hand while Korra, her own amusement ill-concealed but faintly apologetic, assured him that the honor was hers. "Well, what do you say, Captain?" Minami inquired. "Shall we get underway?" "Aye aye, Miss Sato," said the captain briskly. "Mr. Zhi, prepare to weigh anchor. Destination, Kyoshi Island." "Come along, all," said Minami. "I still have one more surprise for you while we let these folks work." So saying, she led them back to the short corridor that ran athwarthships abaft the bridge, but instead of taking them back to the companionway down into the quarters area, she led them -up- a narrow staircase to the uppermost level of the superstructure. Here there were two hatches; one led forward and was labeled COMMUNICATIONS ROOM, while the other, unmarked, faced aft. Minami grinned and opened the latter, gesturing her guests through ahead of her. The spacious room beyond was filled with sunshine, like the sun parlor of Tenzin's house; it was the glassed-in, greenhouse-like area Utena had noticed from the Agni VI. Despite the bright light, however, it was not baking hot like a greenhouse would've been under skies this clear; the glass had just enough of a tint in it to cut the glare and block out the heat, making for a lovely, cool, welcoming space. One of the windows on the after wall, they saw, was actually a sliding door, leading out onto a little railed-off promenade deck overlooking the flight deck. The view, unsurprisingly, was spectacular - particularly right now, with Air Temple Island, Aang Island, and the Republic City skyline still filling the horizon beyond the ship's creamy wake. To everyone's surprise, the solarium was -configured- like the sun parlor of Tenzin's house, too - from the comfortable grouping of furniture arranged next to the entrance to the DesignDesk station and architect's table at the far end, positioned for the optimal view of the sea. "Voila," said Minami with a beaming smile. "All the comforts of home, and then some." Korra blinked at the reproduction of the Mount Weitang project office, then turned to her and said, "Minami, we - " "Yes, Korra, I -know- you planned to just put the project on hold for the duration, but I know you," said Minami with an indulgent smile. "-And- Corwin. Lounge around and do nothing for nearly three weeks? I think we all know that was never going to work." Everyone laughed at that, and at the comically hangdog look on Korra's face as she admitted that Minami probably had a point. Dinner on the first night out demonstrated that the food aboard the Mirai, like all the other amenities, was first-rate. Unlike many rich people, Minami did not generally employ a personal chef, but for voyages that would involve dignitaries coming aboard, she was in the habit of arranging for a senior kitchen staffer from one or another of Republic City's finest restaurants to join the yacht's crew as a contractor. On this particular trip, the individual in question was normally the sous-chef of the Phoenix House, and she seemed to be relishing the opportunity to run off the chain for a couple of weeks, flexing culinary muscles usually left unflexed in the Phoenix House's renowned but rather tradition-bound kitchen. Her offerings, delivered to the owner's table in the ship's small but magnificently appointed dining room by smartly uniformed stewards, were spectacular - and, unlike everything available on Air Temple Island, they involved quite a lot of meat. The inevitable result, on that first night, was a scene of carnage that would have terrified passers-by if there'd been any, as four carnivorous people who had been living on that vegetarian island for weeks reacquainted themselves with their old friend animal protein with what could fairly be described as "a vengeance". Even Minami, who had been sort of expecting it, was slightly agog at the spectacle. An hour or so after dinner, up on the top deck, Utena - almost by accident - made an astonishing discovery. While Korra and Corwin made certain all the drawings and files they needed were aboard (either physically or electronically) and generally reoriented themselves to their new working environment, Minami relaxed in an armchair with a fruity beverage, and Anthy read a passage from Avatar Yangchen's memoirs to Annabelle, Garnet, and Makoto (who gave every impression of closely attending), she went out onto the miniature promenade deck abaft the solarium. Once there, with the door shut behind her, she leaned on the rail, took a deep, blissful, eyes-closed breath of the cool sea air... .. and then opened her eyes and saw the sky. "... oh -wow,-" she breathed, gazing in wonderment at the celestial show above her. Out here, far out of sight of land, in a world with air as clear (despite the well-established industrialization of the third century) as Diqiu's and with the light of the room behind her largely contained by the tinted glass, the seeing was spectacular. In fact it was probably the best she'd ever encountered, in several years now as an avid amateur astronomer, and the blue-black sky above her was practically -ablaze- with starlight. Yue had not yet risen (and would be but a crescent when she did), but Utena could still make out the details of her rose crest ring; she thought she might almost have been able to -read- if the print were large enough. Turning back to the solarium, she opened the sliding door partway and said quietly, "Hey, you guys - you have to come and see this." With expressions ranging from interested to faintly quizzical, the others all put aside what they were doing and joined her on the promenade deck; it was just slightly crowded with all of them out there, but not uncomfortably so, and with the door shut behind them, they could instantly see what she was getting at. Korra grinned broadly, her teeth glinting in the starlight. "Good, eh?" she said, then winked. "Wait'll you see the Southern Lights." Utena smiled and turned back to considering the sky. "The constellations are different here," she observed after a few moments. "I wish I'd thought to buy a planisphere before we left Republic City." "Hmmm," said Minami thoughtfully. "One second." As with most of the doors on the ship, there was a small intercom panel set into the frame around the one leading back into the solarium. She went to it now and pressed the topmost in the row of call buttons. "Bridge, Third Officer Han," said a man's voice after a moment. "Mr. Han, would you please pass the word for Mr. Zhi?" said Minami pleasantly. "He's needed on the promenade deck with his navigation instruments." "Aye aye, Miss Sato," said Han at once. Minami thanked him, switched off the intercom, and then turned a mischievous smile to the others. "It's good to be the commodore." First Officer Zhi arrived only a minute or two later, perfectly pressed despite the hour, carrying a black leather case and looking a little bit puzzled. By this time, everyone else had resumed their activities inside; at his entrance, Minami smiled over her fruity drink and said, "Mr. Zhi, would you be kind enough to share some of your celestial knowledge with Commodore Tenjou? She's an experienced sailor in her own right, but... " (Here she smiled a little slyly, shooting Corwin a wink.) "... not under our sky." Zhi continued to look confused for a second or so longer, then finished parsing the request and smiled, suddenly looking much more human than he had when shouting rigidly formal greetings to the Avatar on the bridge. "It'd be my pleasure, Miss Sato," he said, and then reported to the promenade deck to do as he was asked. It would take the Mirai five days at her (very impressive) top speed to cover the 5,000 or so sea miles between Republic City and Kyoshi Island, her only planned stop on the way to Nanisivik. In that time, Annabelle's parents discovered to their delight that their daughter was evidently a natural traveler. To be sure, sea conditions were reasonably calm throughout the voyage, and the ship's trimaran hull and advanced stabilizers made for a very smooth ride; but all the same, Corwin, at least, had harbored a few concerns, and it appeared that they were quite unfounded. The travelers quickly found themselves settling into a shipboard routine very much like the one they'd enjoyed on Air Temple Island, dividing their time between recreational activities, athletic pursuits, family togetherness, and (for Corwin and Korra) unexpectedly continued diligence on the Mount Weitang project. Thanks to the Mirai's sophisticated communications equipment, not only was Minami able to stay on top of all the various business and technical concerns which she was unable to put aside for the duration of the trip, the mountain house's architect and engineer could keep in touch with their self-appointed site supervisor, who reported that everything was going extremely well. On pleasant days (which was most of them, as they plied the warm waters of the tropics), Utena and Korra did their training and sparring out on the flight deck rather than shutting themselves up belowdecks in the ship's modular dojo. So, too, did Anthy and (in the absence of Nyima) Corwin. Even Minami occasionally pried herself away from the heavy work of running Future Industries remotely to keep her edges sharp with the others; she was not in any sense a professional martial artist, but like many of her illustrious ancestors, she took pride in her ability to defend herself. For their part, Makoto and Garnet discovered to their chagrin that a 45-knot headwind is a challenging environment in which to frolic aerially, and quickly arrived at the nonverbal consensus that they probably ought to confine themselves to more sedentary pursuits when not below. And Niri, well, Niri caught up on her sleep. If prior visits to the South Pole were anything to go by, she was likely to need as much of a reserve as possible once they arrived. In the evenings - and evening came suddenly at sea - they followed much the same pattern as on shore. After supper, Corwin and Korra would generally retire to the "project office", where - with the lights low to minimize glare on the windows - they worked into the night on the collaborative parts of the project. Often one or more of their fellow travelers would join them there, reading or playing quiet games. On clear nights, Utena spent much of her time out on the promenade deck with Lt. Zhi's borrowed planisphere and octant, leading Korra to joke that they might need to turn the hose on her to dislodge her from her perch. The first exception to this pattern was Monday evening, when the Mirai passed through a band of heavy tropical rain. This kept everyone inside, and the Tenjous decided to make an early night of it, leaving Corwin and Korra to their work. They, in turn, passed a quiet but productive evening in the office with smooth jazz turned down low on the shortwave, punctuated occasionally by the chimes of the Earth Kingdom Radio standard time signal, all underlaid by the drumming of the rain on the ceiling above them. Speaking little, they worked unhurriedly but steadily, enjoying the opportunity to sink fully into the groove without having to ignore anyone in the process. By one-thirty or so on what was technically Tuesday morning, Corwin had reached the stage of the proceedings where his eyelids were heavy and felt somewhat as if their interior surfaces had been lightly sanded, like a road in winter. These, and a mild but escalating difficulty in focusing on what he was doing, were clear warning signs that he ought to head for bed, or at least take a break and get something to drink, but he did his best to ignore them for the moment. He was still bent on finishing the perspective sketch he was working on, which he was sure would convey the grandeur he was envisioning for the house's main room if he could just get it done; and besides, this had been such a perfect evening he was loath to admit it was over just yet. In this state he was increasingly susceptible to distraction, and not always from sources that were immediately obvious. Right now, for instance, he kept catching movement out of the corner of his eye. It wasn't a -surprise- that this was happening; Korra was over there, just outside his conscious field of view, bent over her drafting table and engaged in a review of the structural diagrams for the west wing of the house. Normally he could tune her out and get on with his own work, but in his present condition this was becoming harder and harder. Eventually, without really registering the change, he'd put down his stylus and turned to see exactly what it was that kept tripping his motion sensor. This turned out to be Korra's hair, specifically her ponytail. It moved whenever she did, swinging a concordant angle as she turned her head to look from one side of the drawing she was reviewing to the other. Now that he'd turned to take direct note of it, Corwin found himself oddly fascinated by the physics involved - the interaction of gravity, mass, and inertia, the way thousands of individual strands could and did function as a single body. He watched with silent absorption for perhaps two minutes, until she stopped moving to focus on a particular small detail of the drawing for an extended moment. While some small, detached part of him watched in bemusement, Corwin found himself rolling his chair a little closer, reaching out, and batting at her ponytail like a cat to break up its unsatisfying stillness. Startled by this sudden, unwarranted liveliness on the part of her hair, Korra paused, then turned to look back over her shoulder and inquire archly, "Um, yes?" "Sorry," Corwin replied. "Getting punchy. It stopped moving, you see," he said, returning enough from his reverie as he said it to realize how ridiculous it sounded. Korra was pretty tired herself by that point, though, and she seemed to understand. "Ah," she said, nodding, and when she turned back to her work, it was with a little extra something that made her ponytail flick almost completely sideways before describing an arc back to its usual rest position. "Well, now you're just showing off," Corwin mock-grumped. He turned back to the DesignDesk, but his momentum was broken now, and besides, he saw with his newly-unzombified eyes that he hadn't made any progress in the last few minutes that he wouldn't just have to do over again after he'd had some sleep anyway. Sighing, he saved the file, switched the console to sleep mode, and then got down from his stool and went to look over Korra's shoulder. "Calling it a day?" she wondered without looking up, making a small measurement. "Yeah, I think so," Corwin said, then admitted, "I just corrected the same angle at least three times. That's not getting me anywhere." "Well, I'm not far behind you," Korra conceded, putting down her pencil and straightening her back with a mild crack and a satisfied grunt. "Just want to clean this up a little more." Corwin looked. "Is this the second floor?" "Mm-hmm, the part that'll hold up the west wing deck," said Korra. She picked up her pencil again and used it to point out the place where the structural members changed direction, running north-south in the main house and east-west in the west wing. Corwin nodded. "Looks good." He considered something for a second, regarding Korra's profile with a thoughtful look, then said, "Hey Korra?" "Mm?" she replied, still focused mostly on the drawing. "Would you do something for me?" Korra turned to give him a questioning look. "What?" "Take it down for a minute?" Corwin asked. When she looked puzzled, he explained, "Just in back, if you want. It's just, you've had that same hairstyle ever since I can remember. That or the formal version with the little... " He gestured vaguely with his hand cupped at the back of his head. "... cap thing. I'm not sure I've ever -seen- you with it all the way down." "Usually that means something really bad is happening," Korra said dryly, "but... OK." She put her pencil down again, reached up with both hands, and let down her ponytail, then gave her head a shake. With the tie removed, her thick dark-brown hair fell naturally around her shoulders and down her back; it was long enough to reach the middle of her back, between her pronounced shoulder blades, and probably as far in front, if her still-tied sidelocks hadn't been in the way. The effect was to make her look... not -older-, exactly, but slightly more mature than she usually did, in a casual and unstudied way that was not unlike Utena's usual style. It also, along with the mild blush that rose slowly in her face as Corwin regarded her, gave her an unusual air of vulnerability, if only because she was so obviously unaccustomed to anyone seeing her that way, and he found that curiously appealing. "Hmm," he said pensively; then he smiled his boyish, tired smile and declared, "Nice." Then, his curiosity satisfied, he turned back to the drawing she'd been correcting and said, "So these manufactured floor joists. What kind of span can we get out of them before we have to start cross-bracing?" Korra blinked in surprise at the question, then shook her head again to regain her focus and answered, "Well, it depends on which grade we get. There are three or four different ones... " The next day, all appeared to have returned to normal. Corwin and Korra didn't actually see each other again until dinnertime, what with the various other things they had to do during the day, and after the meal, they returned to the "field office" and picked up where they'd left off without a missed beat. Neither mentioned the curious incident of the hair in the night-time again, because neither thought it especially needed or merited mentioning. It was just an odd, pleasant little moment, as come along sometimes. At least that was how both interpreted it and filed it; but below the surface, something had begun very slowly to change at that moment. Without consciously realizing it, Korra began dialing back her expressions of affection with Corwin thereafter. From that point on, she would often pause fractionally before some easy intimacy and then substitute a lesser gesture in its place. A kiss became a hug, a hug an arm over his shoulders; then an arm over his shoulders became a hand on his forearm. She didn't touch him as often, nor for as long, nor in quite such artlessly personal places as before. She had never taken serious liberties, but now she began refraining from taking even casual ones. Part of this was simply a cooling of the intensity that had come with their long-delayed reunion - a natural diminution of the need to make up for lost time as both became confident that the long break in their relationship would -not- be repeated. But another, larger, more insistent part of it was Korra's developing awareness - at this stage barely liminal - of Corwin not only as a bigger, stronger version of her buddy of old (though he still was that), but as a -man,- full stop. There was a growing cognitive dissonance there that she wasn't ready to think about "out loud" just yet; and even if she did, it would only be to deem it inappropriate on several levels. So she kept herself away from it, unconsciously editing herself: substituting a series of small, easily overlooked awkwardnesses for one big, unmissable one. Easily overlooked by herself and Corwin, at least, but not by Anthy. It had been plain to her from very early on that the Avatar was a very physical sort of person, in her demonstrations of affection as in most everything else; besides which, Anthy was peculiarly well-equipped to detect such small awkwardnesses where others might miss them. The realization came to her gradually, but plainly, and by the time they stopped for fuel at Kyoshi Island, she had begun seriously to consider what she might do about it. THURSDAY, APRIL 8 PORT SUKI, KYOSHI ISLAND Modernity came slowly to Kyoshi Island, partly by chance and partly by choice. The islanders had always been an independent, stubborn bunch - an artifact of the island's eventful origins, no doubt, and the guiding spirit of its namesake and patroness, Avatar Kyoshi - and they had very deliberately chosen which aspects of the post-War brave new world they would embrace and which they would reject. So it was that the traditional agricultural and aquacultural economy was still in force, and the way of life not so very different from the way it had been in Kyoshi's own day. Sure, pretty much every family had a radio - indeed, nowadays most of them had a television - but there were virtually no cars on the island, and the fishermen and -women still did their work largely by hand. In one of the island's few concessions to the third century, one of its several seaports did have a modern port facility. This was for the convenience of oceangoing vessels, many of whose routes brought them conveniently near Kyoshi Island and made it a natural place to stop for fuel and provisions. The boost this provided to the local economy was graciously accepted by most of the locals, so long as the machinery and noise could be confined to one rocky corner of their island. Port Suki, named for one of the heroes of the Hundred-Year War, was that corner. Today, with no scheduled commercial traffic - no liners of the Earth Kingdom Line, United Republic Freight ships, or tankers from Allied Oil or the Chameleon Bay Company passing through - the seaport was quiet. The Mirai had no competition for berthing space, nor a queue to join for fuel, as she rounded the headland and steamed into the harbor. Commander Maki of the Kyoshi Warriors was waiting on the quayside as the vessel tied up, dressed in civvies and carrying a bulging duffel bag. Once the complicated business of making port was accomplished and the fueling process begun, she was welcomed aboard with all the ceremony due a person of her accomplishments - a formal mold she broke as soon as the proceedings were complete, in favor of cheerful hugs all around. "Imagine my surprise when Izumi and I got back to the island and discovered that you -hadn't- gone home," said Maki to Corwin and Utena as she followed Minami toward her stateroom. "You might've said something." "We didn't know we weren't yet," said Utena, a little sheepishly. "It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing." "I see," said Maki with a slightly mischievous smile. "I'm glad I'm not assigned to protect you; I can see you would be an absolutely maddening VIP. -Never- sticking to the plan, -never- keeping your head down, always running -toward- the danger." "I'm afraid she's got you there, elskr," said Corwin sagely. "You're one to talk, train surfer boy," Utena replied, making Maki laugh. Once the Mirai left Kyoshi Island, the ship's passengers became ever-increasingly aware that they were below the tropics now. As the miles clicked ever onward, average temperatures got cooler, the weather a little wilder, the seas a bit rougher. Time on deck became less a balmy spring idyll (indeed, south of the equator it was fall) and more an exercise in exhilaration. Still there was no complaint from Annabelle, apart from the normal temporary complaints customarily lodged by an infant; whatever weaknesses she would have in life, it appeared that seasickness would not be among them, any more than it was for any of her parents. Two days out of Kyoshi Island, they passed by the biggest of the mountainous Patolas, on whose highest peak the Southern Air Temple could plainly be seen even from several miles offshore. The Trinity, Korra, Minami, and Maki gathered on the promenade deck (perilously close to being renamed the "astronomy deck" at this point) to wave, though they were too far to see if anyone was outside, and if anyone had they presumably wouldn't have been able to see anyone on the passing ship either. Then, the gesture made, they went back inside to have some hot cocoa. The Mirai threaded the Patola Strait that night, and the next morning it was obvious to all aboard that they had well and truly entered the proper Southern Ocean. The wind was brisk, the sea whitecapped, and Korra declared cheerfully that she was back in home waters. "I've got a little surprise for you guys," she told Corwin, Utena, and Anthy at the end of breakfast. A few moments later, when the stewards cleared away the dishes, they replaced them with a trio of neatly wrapped brown paper bundles, one for each. "Ahaaa," said Utena, smiling broadly, as she opened hers and drew out a sturdy, fur-trimmed garment. "I -wondered- why you told us not to bother buying any winter clothes before we left. Thank you!" "Oh my," said Anthy, regarding her own. "These are lovely. Where did you get them?" "Well, the hides came by way of Karana's mom," said Korra, "and I did most of the work myself." She grinned as Utena glanced up in surprise from a closer examination of hers. "What, you didn't think I could sew? Avatar or not, I'm a South Pole girl! Been making my own clothes since I was a kid." "That explains why all your pants that aren't store-bought look exactly the same," Corwin deadpanned, drawing a swat to the back of the head. "What?" he protested. "They do. I didn't say it was a BAD thing." Further exploration revealed that each bundle contained a full suite of Water Tribe winter gear - parka, outer trousers, boots, fingered mittens. With the kind of glee usually displayed by children on Christmas, they immediately climbed into the full kit. This left them almost immediately roasting in the heated confines of the dining room, so most of it came back off again, but they kept the parkas on and went out on deck to enjoy the brisk morning in style. Utena's parka was much like Korra's - short and trimly tailored, with three-quarter-length sleeves and white fur trim - but black rather than blue. Though sturdy and warm, it was easy to move in, perfectly cut to accommodate a person who might find herself in a fight. Corwin's, in the traditional Water Tribe blue, was slightly longer and heavier: the garment of a hunter. Anthy's, a dark but rich brickish red, was the most voluminous and elaborately decorated of the three, with stripes of embroidered white Water Tribe knotwork bordering the hood and cuffs and an intricate beaded fringe at its knee-length hemline. "Sorry the color's a little dull - that's the reddest red I could get without cheating and using synthetic dyes," Korra said apologetically as Anthy showed one of her sleeves to the baby she held in her other arm. "Don't be silly, it's beautiful," Anthy told her. "Isn't it, Annabelle?" "Why does it have two hoods?" wondered Garnet, who stood on Anthy's shoulder looking down at her back. "The inner one's not a hood, it's an amaut," Korra told her. Garnet turned and gave her a puzzled look. "And what's that when it's at home?" "Baby pocket. Fooling around with half a dozen yards of silk is all well and good if you're someplace nice and warm like Air Temple Island," she added with a wink, "but when you're in the South Pole and you want to secure a baby, you don't have the time for all that engineering." So saying, she showed Anthy the proper use of the inner compartment, then demonstrated how the oversized hood behind it could be deployed to cover both of the coat's occupants, or left back to provide a handy second compartment for a chilly-looking lemur. "Aha," said Anthy, smiling. "How very practical." "That's us! Hardy, practical folk," said Korra, only semi- sarcastically. "Says so right in the United Republic's Guide to the Rest of the World, or whatever it's officially called. You guys are going to have to improvise a little when it's your turn, I'm afraid," she added to Utena and Corwin as they observed the proceedings with matching little smiles. "Actually, the size she is now, you could just about get away with using your front pockets." Corwin considered the capacious pocket on the front of his parka and remarked wryly, "I could stash two or -three- babies in here." "Don't even joke," said Utena and Anthy in inadvertent stereo; then, glancing at each other, they both broke up giggling while Corwin and Garnet gave them dubious sidelong looks and Korra snickered behind a mittened hand. Temperatures continued to fall as the Mirai steamed southward, and the next two days shortened markedly as they passed. Presented with the excuse to wear their snazzy new winterwear, none of the Trinity seemed to feel any particular need to take their daily workouts inside, and Korra certainly didn't; but Maki and Minami, objecting that they were native to warmer waters, confined themselves thenceforth to the dojo down on the Utility Deck. SUNDAY, APRIL 11 It was the last evening of the voyage when Anthy first shared her observation of the previous mid-week with someone else. They were well into the Southern Ocean by that point, no more than twelve hours out of Nanisivik, and - quite by design - not much was happening. Anthy, sitting at one side of the futon in the solarium, was reading a scroll Nyima had recommended to advance her understanding of Air Nomad conflict resolution, and occasionally commenting on elements of it to Annabelle (who, in all honesty, didn't seem as interested as Makoto did). At the other side, Utena and Garnet were puzzling over the rules of the so-called "Republic variant" of pai sho. "Wait, so you -can't- play a red one if you just played a green one?" Garnet wondered. "I think it depends on the number values," Utena replied, flipping back a few pages in the rulebook. "Or... not? 'Play of a red tile of value greater than five must be preceded by play of a red OR BLACK tile with a value LESS than five, except when preceded by an explicit procedural point of order.'" "Oh, not the 'point of order' thing again," said Garnet. "I don't get this game at all." She abandoned Utena's shoulder and reported instead to her customary station with Annabelle. "Sure, bail out when it gets complicated," Utena joked. "There's that can-do dragon spirit." She turned to Anthy, intending to enlist her aid in teasing the young dragon, and saw that she'd lowered the scroll she was studying and was now regarding the office area with a thoughtful expression instead. Utena raised an eyebrow, looked over there herself, saw nothing evidently out of the ordinary - just Corwin and Korra at the DesignDesk, messing around with the configuration of part of the foundation - and turned her attention back to her wife. "Whatcha lookin' at?" she asked. "Oh... those two at work," said Anthy, nodding toward same. Utena looked again. Still nothing particularly arresting going on, as far as she could tell. "OK... " "Just watch them for a moment," Anthy advised her. Puzzled but game, Utena settled back against the cushions behind her and engaged her powers of observation. Anthy gave her a minute or so to take in the scene, then prompted quietly, "Does anything you see here seem familiar, my love?" "Uh... is this a trick question?" Utena wondered. "Probably," said Anthy with an impish half-smile. "Annabelle, your mother's being cryptic at me," said Utena matter-of-factly. "Make her stop... " Then she trailed off, her face going still, as it came together for her what Anthy was getting at. At the moment, Korra was standing next to Corwin as he sat at the DesignDesk's console; she was leaning in over his shoulder to examine some fine point of the active diagram he was pointing out with his stylus. In that position, Utena would find placing the flat of her near hand against his back the obvious and natural thing to do; and as she watched, she saw that Korra had evidently thought so too, only she pre-empted the maneuver at the last moment and diverted her hand to the back of the -chair- instead. The decision was subtle, almost seamless, and Utena doubted very much whether Korra had been consciously aware that she'd made it, but it stood out like a neon sign to Utena because it was so familiar to her. That sort of decision had been a routine part of her own interactions with Corwin for years. "Oh, hang on, I see what you're getting at," she mused to Anthy. "Hmm." Then, with a shrug, she added casually, "Welp; knew this was comin'." Anthy blinked, surprised by the matter-of-fact tenor of her husband's response. "You did?" Utena looked at Anthy's slightly puzzled expression and gave a delighted little laugh. "Ha! Did I get someplace before you for once?" To Garnet, she added, "Mark your calendar, you may not see this happen again for years." "I'll make a note," said Garnet drowsily. Considering Utena with a judicious eye, Anthy asked mildly, "What do you think?" "I'm not sure yet," Utena replied, settling back against the cushion behind her as she continued watching the two at work. "Or, well, I know what I -think,- I'm just not sure what to -do- about it yet." She spotted a flicker of concern crossing Anthy's face and smiled, reaching over to pat her arm. "I'm not -bothered- by it, though," she said, then asked rhetorically, "Heck, who knows better than me what -that- feels like?" Anthy's worried look faded, replaced with a wry little smile of her own as she took Utena's hand. "Indeed," she said. "I just have to give it some thought," Utena went on. "Some... diplomacy... may be in order," she added with a little grin and a wink. "Hmm," said Anthy thoughtfully, but without elaborating further, she picked up her scroll and went back to studying it. Upon arrival in Nanisivik on Monday evening, the first order of business after securing the ship and clearing Customs was to head to Chief Hakoda Memorial Airport, where they arrived just in time to greet Ryo Sato and two of the Fire Ferrets. Ryo, like his sister and Maki, had on cutting-edge polar expedition gear that made him look like a well-funded explorer, but Karana - a native of Korra's own hometown - was decked out in a hunting amautik, slightly more utilitarian in style than Anthy's. To the mild surprise of some of those assembled, Azana was dressed in the Water Tribe style as well; she wore a fitted "fighter's parka" like those of Korra and Utena. "Hey, you made it!" said Korra, embracing both Fire Ferrets at once. "Where's Wan?" "He decided to meet us in Jinbao," said Azana. "Hm," Korra said, frowning. "I hope I made it clear enough that he'd be welcome." "Ahh, don't worry, he knows," said Karana with a grin. "He's just a big wimp about being cold." Azana nodded. "One of the many reasons he hates it when we play in Frostbite Point," she said, smiling wryly. They all caught the light rail back downtown and had a convivial dinner at Karana's favorite seafront restaurant, then grabbed a few hours' sleep aboard the Mirai before heading up Pangniqtuuq Fjord in smaller craft - some aboard the Agni VI, others in a rigid inflatable unpacked from one of the ship's storage modules. By this point in the year, there were only about six hours of daylight coming, so they'd set off long before first light. Dawn broke shortly before they arrived at the fishing station (also called Pangniqtuuq) at the head of the fjord, revealing the breathtaking beauty of the fjord and the antarctic landscape in general. Utena, standing behind Minami's seat in the open cockpit of the Agni VI, let out a low sound of amazement as the golden light of dawn flooded the western face of the fjord, causing the quartz veins in the craggy rock to flash and gleam like tongues of flame. Around them, what had been black and forbidding water began to shine with a deep, lustrous blue as the sky above lightened. Glittering white chunks of ice floated past here and there; none were large enough to pose a threat to boats as sturdily built as theirs, but Minami and Ryo, conning the RIB, avoided them anyway. Seeing her young friend's wide-eyed, dazzled reaction, Korra smiled. "You like it?" she asked. "It's amazing," said Utena. "It reminds me a little of Asgard, and that's not something I often say about places in the mortal world." Korra's smile became a little softer, almost sentimental; she'd never been to Corwin's celestial homeland, but she'd heard enough about it to know that Utena's compliment was not offered lightly. Nodding, she said, "This is a -hard- land, make no mistake... but it's beautiful, and it's been home to my people for thousands of years." "They say that long ago, when explorers from the Earth Kingdom first arrived in the South Pole, they couldn't believe -anything- could live here - certainly not people," Maki observed. "Ha, sometimes they -still- think so," Karana called across from the other boat. Not long afterward, the little flotilla pulled into Pangniqtuuq, a hamlet consisting only of a livery stable, a few small houses, a community longhouse, and a half-mile or so of wharves. Where Nanisivik stood at the confluence of two fjords, Pangniqtuuq was located at the heads of two; one, bearing the same name, ran northeast to the capital, while the other, Qurluqtuq Fjord, cut through the tundra to the west before reaching the sea at a place unsurprisingly called Qurluqtuq. From ice-out in the spring until the freeze in late fall, fishermen and -women - most of whom kept their main homes in Senna - worked the waters of both fjords, as well as the coastal waters beyond Qurluqtuq, from boats based out of the piers of Pangniqtuuq. Once the polar night fell, though, the fjords froze over, and there would be no more fishing until the next spring. The last daylight of the season was a mere ten days away at this point, and the port was already shutting down for the season. Only a few boats were moored at the piers; the rest had already been pulled up onto the snowy beach, overturned, and covered with staked-down hides to protect them through the winter. Within a couple of weeks, no one would be left here full-time apart from the hardy souls whose job was to greet the infrequent travelers coming up the frozen fjords from Nanisivik and Qurluqtuq by dogsled, arctic camel, or motorski. There was one person waiting for them on the dock as they approached: a woman, petite even in heavy hunter's furs, who helped them tie up with the practiced ease of an experienced mariner as soon as the boats stopped alongside. "Hi, Mom!" said Karana as she sprang onto the dock and caught the woman up in a hug. "Karana," said her mother, returning the embrace. "Azana," she added, and Anthy noticed with a slight smile that she hugged the firebender as though she were -also- her long-away daughter back for a visit - an impression she reinforced with the next thing she said: "Welcome home." "Hello, Kejna," said Azana warmly. "It's good to be back." As Karana introduced the rest of the group, three things immediately struck Utena about Kejna. The first was that she had a really firm handshake; the second was that she wore her hair just like Korra's mother had in the old photos of her Utena had seen; and the third was that she was instantly likeable in a rough-and-ready kind of way, reminding her of Kei Morgan. When Corwin's turn came, Kejna seemed at first not to recognize him; then she smiled broadly and declared, "I -told- Nanuruq you'd grow up to be better-looking than him!" before grabbing him up in a hug of his own. "Wait until he sees you." Corwin laughed. "Flatterer," he said. "Let me introduce my family... " Kejna didn't bat an eye at the quick rundown of Corwin's domestic situation, and Utena, reflecting, remembered Korra telling her that such arrangements were not wholly unknown among her people. Like Korra's cousin Kemba, who ran a handicrafts stall in the Railway Square Market back in Republic City, she just grinned and made a quip about what a great hunter he must've grown up to be; then she made much of Annabelle, received the discovery of Garnet with exactly the same unflappable aplomb she'd shown about the Ravenhair-Tenjou complex, and ushered them all into the longhouse to warm up a bit with some hot broth and seaweed noodles. "So," said Korra once they'd all put away a bowl. "Are you crazy kids ready to join my tribe?" Corwin paused with a mouthful of noodles half-slurped, then pulled them the rest of the way in and inquired, "Rnt nw?" "Why not?" Korra asked rhetorically. "We'd only have to come back out here to do it anyway, and the conditions look good. We've got four hours or so of daylight left, the wind is right, and the icedrift as we were coming in looked just about perfect." "Do you have a boat?" Utena wondered. "I'm assuming we can't use the ones we came in... " "I do," Kejna said. "I'm through fishing for the season, but I haven't put her up yet." She tipped her head back and poured the broth from her bowl down her throat, then plunked the bowl on the table and grinned at Utena. "You help me haul her and hide her when you're done and she's yours for the day." "That's very generous of you," said Anthy. "Thank you." "No worries," said Kejna casually, tonging up a second helping of noodles and pouring broth over them. "I -once- hoped Quruuin would join the tribe by marrying my daughter," she added, elbowing Corwin while Maki laughed and Karana spat coffee explosively onto the table, "but however he does it, I'm happy to help out." Twenty minutes later, having made certain that Annabelle was set for an hour or two, Corwin, Utena, and Anthy stood on the wharf a few places down from the slip holding the Agni VI and regarded another, very different craft. Kejna's boat was larger, but narrower; about 50 feet long, clinker-built and tapering to a point at both ends, she had prominent prow- and sternposts that arched decoratively upward, covered in intricate carvings. The prow was distinguished visually by the figurehead, a scuplture so lifelike Utena almost fancied she could hear it growling, which depicted some streamlined aquatic creature that had vaguely mammalian features, but gills in its neck and a mouthful of jagged triangular teeth. She had a single mast with a cutter rig, but despite the triangular sails, she still bore a strong resemblance to the boats of Corwin's ancestral culture. That likeness hadn't escaped him; with an appreciative smile, he remarked sincerely, "Now that is a boat." He turned to Korra with a roguish twinkle in his eye. "I should make a couple of calls." Gauging the size of the vessel with a practiced eye, he went on, "We get 40 or 50 strong rowers in that hull and we can go a-viking. Won't they be surprised up in Qurluqtuq?" Korra laughed and punched his shoulder. "No pillaging today," she told him. "And no rowing either! That's cheating." "She's a beautiful piece of work," Utena agreed, looking over the boat with an appreciative eye. "What's she called?" she asked Kejna. Kejna smiled and indicated the snarling figurehead. "Ottershark," she said. "You're not likely to run across the real thing this time of year; they go pelagic in the fall and winter. If you do see one, try extra-hard to stay out of the water," she added wryly. "Vicious little bastards. They'll take your leg off all the way up to your neck." "I'll make a note of that," Utena promised, eyeing the figurehead with new respect. With an indulgent chuckle, Anthy observed to Annabelle that her father was in a mood for mischief today; then she turned to Azana and Karana, who stood nearest, and said, "Would you two mind looking after Annabelle while we're gone? I don't think we're in much danger of orphaning her today," she added with a wry little smile, "but it's probably best if she stays ashore, just in case." Azana blinked, startled to be asked, as Karana replied cheerfully, "We'd be delighted. Wouldn't we, sweetie?" she asked Annabelle. Then, nudging Azana with an elbow, she murmured out of the corner of her mouth, "(Well, go on... )" Azana glanced at her, looking slightly alarmed; then, clearly uncertain quite what to do with her hands, she held them up as if to accept a sack of grain or some other heavy object. Karana snorted. "Not like -that,- what's the matter with you?" she said, demonstrating a more appropriate hand position. "It's not my fault I'm not very maternal," said Azana, sounding a trifle hurt. "You've seen the kind of example I grew up with." Karana nodded, conceding the point. "Well, yeah, there's that." She put a hand on her teammate's shoulder and turned her around, adding, "OK, let's have your hood." Azana glanced back over her shoulder, looking mildly dismayed, and Karana laughed. "Oh, don't panic, 'Zana, I know you're not ready for that yet. You're not wearing the right kind of jacket anyway. You can't carry a baby in a fighting anorak. Here." She made a soft chirruping sound; after a moment's rustling, Pabu emerged from her amaut and climbed up onto her shoulder, his fur amusingly frizzed from interaction with the lining. Karana petted him, gave him a treat, and then tucked him away in Azana's hood instead. "There you go, nice and snug. He's not the South Pole's biggest fan, poor fella," she explained. "Fire ferrets come from a warmer climate. Anyway, there you go!" she added, turning around to offer her amaut for Anthy's use. As Anthy smilingly transferred her daughter, Karana laughed at Azana's look of relief and gave her shoulder a playful shove, remarking, "Honestly, your mom saw the way you react to actual babies, she'd stop pestering you to have your own." "I don't dislike children!" Azana protested. "I just... don't know what to do with them." Anthy smiled and patted her arm. "You'll be fine. She's very easy to get along with." Karana shrugged her shoulders a couple of times, resettling her newly weighted amaut, then looked back at her passenger and said cheerfully, "All good back there?" "She seems very comfortable," Anthy confirmed. "Now you be good for Karana and Azana until we get back, all right?" she said, kissing the baby's forehead. Annabelle did not seem inclined to dispute the instruction. "I'd better stay here and supervise," said Garnet, though Anthy noticed, with an enigmatic smile, that the little dragon draped herself over Azana's shoulders, not Karana's. "All set?" asked Korra. "This shouldn't take more than an hour or so. We're not going to have to go very far to find ice to dodge, this time of year," she added. "All right, get aboard, I'll cast you off," said Kejna. "Try not to sink my boat, Quruuin," she added, mussing Corwin's hair as he passed her en route to the gangplank. "I'll do my best," he promised. "Thanks, Kejna." "Like I said, no worries," she replied, uncoiling the bowline from the cleat it was fast to and throwing it aboard. "Good luck!" With Korra's help, they got the Ottershark away from the pier and heading out into the fjord; then Corwin turned to her and said wryly, "Is this a bad time to note that I haven't been aboard a sailboat in six years?" "Is it a bad time to note that I -never- have?" Utena quipped before Korra could respond. Corwin gave her a surprised look. "Seriously? You were a poor little rich girl, you didn't have a skiff or something?" "Nope," Utena said. "I was more interested in horses. Who ever heard of a prince in a white sailboat?" "Huh." "I haven't been on the water in a long time myself," Anthy remarked, "but I expect it'll come back to me readily enough." Grinning, Korra said, "OK, well, I can't help you once the actual test starts, for obvious reasons, but while we're looking for some ice to dodge, I can give you a couple of quick sailing lessons... " The training course was necessarily very abbreviated indeed - it lasted only for the length of time it took them to sail about two-thirds of the way down Qurluqtuq Fjord - but by the time the Ottershark reached a favorable position for the start of the trial, the three were as ready as Korra could make them in such a limited time. Now, with the boat hove to and the sails slack, they stood and surveyed their prospective opposition while the Avatar gave them a final briefing. The fjord narrowed just beyond their position, bottlenecking to a mere hundred yards or so wide before opening onto the sea. That would have been daunting enough in any craft larger than a small boat (particularly as a sprinkling of rocks to either side hinted at the navigable channel being even more constrained than that), but on top of it, the waters of the strait and the narrow bay beyond it were aswarm with slabs and gleaming chunks of ice. These were not proper icebergs (which tended to calve from the glaciers in the -spring-, not the fall), but sea ice from the Southern Ocean, drifting down from the Icefall Islands with the prevailing currents. Corwin recalled, from a book he'd read once on a rare slow afternoon at Korra's, that this was -why- Qurluqtuq was a less-traveled fjord, and the settlement of the same name only a minor village. "OK," said Korra briskly. "This is it. If we're going to do this right - and we are - then I can't help you any further. What you three have to do, without any input from me, is get this boat," (she tapped the gunwale with a palm) "through that channel," (indicating the ice-choked passage) "and out to the open sea without sinking her." "Oh, is -that- all," said Utena with a nonchalance she did not altogether feel. "Corwin, you're the one mainly being tested here," Korra went on, "so you're the captain." She pointed to the slightly elevated station at the Ottershark's stern. "You handle the rudder and command your crew. Utena, you have the least sailing experience - your job is to control the mainsheet." She pointed to one of the various ropes connected to the larger of the boat's two principal sails. "In a wind like this, that mainsail will either be trying to get away from you or go aback, and you can't let her do either one - you'll have to hold fast and never blink." Utena's grin was slightly wry as she went to the position Korra was indicating. "Brute force and stubbornness, eh?" "Well, at a time like this, it's best to play to your strengths," Korra deadpanned, drawing a laugh. Then, turning a wry smile of her own to Anthy, the Avatar went on, "Anthy, the stays'l is your responsibility. It takes a delicate touch to manage a jib in conditions like this. From there you'll be in a position to help Utena -and- Corwin... or make either one of their jobs completely impossible. Get it right and we're golden. Get it wrong... " She shrugged eloquently. "And we're swimming in very cold water," said Anthy with a calm nod, taking her place. "I understand. Makoto, dear, you'd best stay inside," she added as the lemur emerged partway from her hood to look around. "We don't want you blowing away if there's a squall," she added with a smile. "Prrbt," Makoto agreed, retiring out of the biting wind. Korra nodded, walked up to the prow of the boat, turned to face them, and sat down on the deck, folding her legs Indian-fashion; without being instructed to, Niri curled up behind her like a windbreak. Korra's face was as serious, and as perfectly composed, as Corwin had ever seen it; she looked the length of the boat, directly into his eyes, and held him there for a second, as if taking his measure. Then, with just the faintest hint of a half-smile, she said, "Begin," and closed her eyes. /* Bruce Hanifan "Adventure 101" _Deadliest Catch: Music from the Series_ (2006) */ Without expert guidance, it took the trio a minute or so to get the various ropes sorted out, the sails reconfigured, and the Ottershark back in motion, but once they did, things began happening pretty fast. The wind was brisk and cold, and once before it, the boat picked up speed rapidly. Until they entered the strait, they had a clear run, with only a scattering of small drift ice to avoid, and the wind was blowing almost straight outward, funneled by the walls of the fjord toward the sea. As the fjord narrowed, though, the three discovered that this wind was not so straightforward after all. The drawing-in of the walls caused eddies, strange gusts of crosswind, and Utena found herself learning suddenly and sharply what Korra had meant about its unpredictability as the mainsheet became like a live and unhappy thing in her hands. As they entered the narrowest part of the channel, a sudden burst nearly tore the line from her grasp, which would have left the mainsail flapping uselessly - indeed, dangerously - at the worst possible time. She hung on grimly, resisting the urge to take a turn of the line around one hand; another gust like that could well break fingers if the rope were looped around them. She glanced to her right and saw Anthy's profile set as if in stone, her emerald eyes narrowed against the boat's chill slipstream. The jib wouldn't be pulling as hard as the mainsail, but the precision of its positioning was even more important, and so she had - literally and figuratively - her hands just as full. From his place at the tiller, Corwin had them both fully in his field of view. With his engineer's eye for angles and forces, he could see the tension in Utena's body, the set of her back and arms, even through her parka. He couldn't see the determination on her face from this angle, but he took it as a given that it was there. A few paces away from her, feet wide apart and solidly braced, Anthy's shorter, slimmer, but more heavily draped frame was as taut as a bowstring, and Corwin knew without seeing it that -her- face would be set in a look not of stubborn determination, but intense concentration. Even under the circumstances, both thoughts brought a little smile to his face. He didn't have time to savor it long, however, because they were in the lane and heading for the ice. At his back, the wind felt like a good force six at least, 25 knots or more, and still freshening as the channel narrowed. The chain of discrete experiences that made up the flow of an everyday life event gave way to a kind of high-functioning blur, in which his mind rode the waves of events like the Ottershark's hull on the choppy sea. Without the time or mental capacity for pleasantry, he issued instructions in a sharp, clipped, impersonal voice - one very unlike any he would normally have used to address anyone, but particularly women he loved. His commands were few and infrequent, though, as most of the time he hadn't time even for that much; he had to gauge the situation, look ahead, check to either side, mind the current and the wind, and react to unfolding contingencies, and for the most part that left him able only to trust that his crew would do their jobs as he did his. Twice they struck against growlers, big chunks of drift ice almost large enough to be called bergs, but both times they avoided disaster, once through a quick action of Corwin's at the tiller, the other by a lightning-fast instinctive adjustment of Anthy's to the jib that altered the airflow over the mainsail. In both cases the Ottershark avoided a head-on crash by inches and shouldered the growler aside with a grinding scrape, her sturdy shieldwood flanks shrugging off the blows like iron stays. Even at those moments, Korra never moved, nor ever opened her eyes. As the channel widened again, the wind seemed to suffer a fit of indecision, dying away slightly but becoming even more unpredictable and gusty. Spindrift and even a couple of stray waves broke over the boat's sides, spraying the Ottershark's crew as they clung grimly on and saw to their tasks; one furiously contrary gust stressed the mainsail to the point where Utena half-expected it to split, if it didn't pull her right arm out of its socket first, but mercifully abated before either could (quite) happen... ... and then they were through, and the Ottershark was scudding into open waters, the mad winds of the fjord's mouth settling down to a comfortable easterly breeze. Anthy, sunk far down in a self-induced fugue of concentration, blinked as she returned to normal consciousness and looked around. A few paces to her left, Utena still stood braced, but easier now, a smile breaking out on her face as she saw that they had made it. The two women grinned at each other, then turned aft to see Corwin's reaction. "Well!" he said, half-sitting back against the stern rail, one hand still cautiously on the tiller. "We're alive!" He grinned. "I guess that means we're officially great at boats." Glancing back over his shoulder, he regarded the mouth of the fjord for a moment, then turned back to them with a slightly wry edge coming into his grin and added, "Of course, now we have to figure out how to get -back- through there to return Kejna's boat." Korra rose smoothly to her feet, smiling broadly, and said, "Don't worry - I'll take care of that." They arrived back at Pangniqtuuq half an hour later with a broom, the traditional symbol of victory at sea, lashed to the top of the mast. Seeing it, Kejna led those waiting on the dock in a cheer before springing to help them tie up. "So! The mighty huntsman and his clan return in triumph," she said with a grin as the four and Niri disembarked. Smiling, Korra offered her a bow and a Water Tribe salute, declaring formally, "Thank you, Elder Kejna, for the generous loan of your boat." "You're very welcome, Avatar Korra," replied Kejna with equal formality. "I'm pleased your young man didn't sink her." Korra gave her a slightly dubious look; Kejna smirked slightly and raised her eyebrows, to which Korra rolled her eyes. The exchange drew a snort of laughter from Kejna, giggles from Utena and Anthy, and a slightly confounded look from Corwin. "Right!" said Kejna, as if nothing had just happened. "Let's get her out of the water." While most of the crew turned to and hauled the Ottershark up onto the beach, then stood her inverted on a couple of specially-carved blocks and started covering her with weighted hides for the winter, Anthy and Karana retired to the longhouse to take care of some routine infant maintenance and close up the building, respectively. "Did Azana make any headway at getting back to her comfort zone?" asked Anthy with a mischievous smile as she and her daughter took care of business. Kneeling behind the cookstove, Karana glanced back over her shoulder with a grin. "Yeah, she's OK. Just inexperienced." She bent down and started turning off the gas supply with a wrench, continuing as she did, "I've got a younger brother and a ton of cousins - Mom and Dad between them have family in every village from here to Kuujjuarapik. So I've been around babies since I was one myself. I'm used to 'em." She straightened up, twirling the wrench in her hand, then put it away in the drawer next to the stove and went to the sink. "'Zana's barely got any blood family at all," she explained as she opened the taps and started drawing the residual water out of the pipes with gentle gestures (having shut off the master supply outside before they entered). "Just her mother, Grandpa Ito, and a half-brother who's 30 years older than her. So basically the only time she ever -sees- babies and little kids is when she's down here with me, and she never had any around her growing up." "Mm. I was in a similar situation before Annabelle came along," said Anthy, nodding. "I was the youngest in my family, and we didn't have many extended relations." She smiled, smoothing the infant's hair, and went on, "Fortunately, I seem to have passable instincts." Karana chuckled as she finished draining the lines, then started gathering up the lamps to be cleaned and put away in their cabinet. "You're one up on 'Zana, then, 'cause she has no instincts at all. She wasn't lying before, though, she doesn't -dislike- kids. She just doesn't know what to do about 'em." She chuckled indulgently, shaking her head. "It's probably just as well she doesn't intend to have any of her own." "What about you?" Anthy asked automatically, then reddened slightly, looking surprised at her own question, and said, "Oh my, that was rude of me. I do apologize. It's none of my business, of course." Karana looked up from wiping down a lamp and laughed. "Oh, trust me, you're not the first to ask. Every one of my cousins who has one, that's the first thing she asks me when I visit. Usually I say why should I? I can always borrow yours." Returning to her work, she went on, still smiling, "They usually assume I'm joking to dodge the question, but it's really how I feel. I love kids, but hey - I love airplanes too, that doesn't mean I feel like I've gotta make my own. There's people for that." With a laugh, Anthy sat down next to her and handed her the next lamp as she put the one she'd been working on into the cabinet. "Well, you're welcome to borrow this one whenever you like," she said. "Don't think I won't take you up on that," said Karana cheerfully. "I am the world's -greatest- honorary aunt." "Is that why you wear an amautik?" asked Anthy with a mischievous smile. "No, I wear an amautik because it's comfortable and stylish," said Karana with mock primness; then she grinned and added, "Being able to commandeer other people's children is just a side benefit." With the Ottershark secured and the longhouse closed up, all that was left to do was saddle up the outpost's arctic camels for the hour-long ride inland to Senna. For the last mile or so, Utena noticed Corwin sitting a little straighter on his camel, his expression growing brighter. She smiled to herself and nudged her own mount up alongside. "You look awfully pleased," she said. Corwin looked over at her, grinning. "I haven't been here since I was ten," he said. "The last three years I came to Diqiu, we stayed in Republic City the whole time." They arrived at Senna with an hour or more of full daylight remaining, topping a rise just before the town limits so that the whole cozy assemblage of snug semi-subterranean houses and the broad, snowy expanse of the village common were spread out before them like a picture postcard. Korra and Niri, in the lead, halted here so that everyone would have a chance to take it in. Turning in her saddle, she grinned at her friends and remarked to those who had never seen it before, "Well, here it is!" "Ah, home sweet home," said Karana with a satisfied sigh. Then, turning her head, she added, "What do you think, kiddo?" Annabelle gurgled happily at the question; Karana chuckled in response and turned to the business of getting her camel down the slope into town. Korra's little house was just as Corwin remembered it, with nothing on the outside to distinguish it from any of the other modestly- scaled residences here. A burly man emerged from the next nearest house and came striding across the snow-covered yard to greet them. After receiving a crushing bear hug from the man, Korra cheerfully introduced those of her companions who hadn't met him before. In addition to being her neighbor, it turned out that Nanuruq was also Kejna's husband and Karana's father. A big, hearty man with a rich, booming voice, he welcomed back those he knew - and indeed those he didn't, making both Utena and Anthy feel immediately at home. Anthy noticed that Nanuruq, too, gave a particularly warm welcome to Azana, treating her and Karana as though they were -both- his daughters. Then, taking note of the baby in Karana's amaut, he said with a mischievous twinkle, "Hello there! I'm going to have to assume you're a hitchhiker." "This is Annabelle," said Karana. "She's Anthy and Corwin's - you remember Corwin, right?" Nanuruq turned to regard the young man in question. "Corw - " He blinked, eyes going wide. "Great spirits, look at the size of you!" he cried. "What happened?!" Corwin grinned and received his bear hug in turn, remarking, "Clean living." "Ha!" said Nanuruq merrily. "I'll bet." It took half an hour or so to get their borrowed camels squared away in the village stables, by which point word had gotten around that Korra was back in town. A little crowd of children had gathered around by the time they left the stable to make their way back to her house, racing around and cheering as she made bits of the snowbanks do amusing things for them. "Now this brings back memories," said Corwin nostalgically as they dispersed, racing off to brag to their parents and friends about their encounter. "Except last time I was one of the kids, and so was Karana." "Heh, time flies," said Korra wryly; then she paused on her doorstep, turned to the group, and said, "OK! Here's the deal. My little house is way too small for everyone to sleep here, I'm afraid, but don't despair. Kejna, Karana, and I are going to take care of the problem right before your very eyes." She grinned. "Stand back and enjoy the show." The three Water Tribeswomen required ten minutes flat, using waterbending, earthbending, and good old-fashioned muscle, to construct a temporary but very sturdy-looking longhouse in the space behind Korra's home. Furnishing it took a little longer and a few more people, but by sunset it was fully converted into a comfortable and well- appointed bunkhouse, capable of sleeping or (depending on how the furniture was arranged) serving as dining quarters for a dozen people. Once construction was done, they all gathered there for the evening meal, catered by Karana's mother and father (who were widely avowed the finest hunter and cook, respectively, in the region). Even with the extra space this afforded over the compact kitchen-cum-dining room of Korra's small dwelling, it was a cozy affair with eleven adults and a dragon in attendance, calling to mind festive family gatherings at holiday time. After dinner, while her guests chatted and basked in the kind of repletion such an occasion brings, Korra went quickly out the side door and across to her house. She was gone for only a few moments, and when she returned she was carrying a small earthenware pot. "If I can have everyone's attention for a second?" she said, and the conversations paused as her guests turned to regard her, some curious, others with knowing smiles. "Thanks. Corwin, Anthy, Utena... come over here, please." The three rose from their seats; as they joined her, Korra turned to the others and continued, "As most of you know, I took these three ice dodging in Qurluqtuq Fjord this morning; and, as you can see, we're not dead," she added with a wink, drawing a guffaw from Nanuruq. Korra walked around the trio and turned to face them, her voice and face becoming serious as she explained, "In our tradition, we hold that the trial of ice dodging reveals essential truths about the character of those who face it. To those who are successful, we bestow certain marks that acknowledge those truths." With that, Korra dipped her right index finger into the pot; when she withdrew it, her fingertip was covered in some pasty blue substance, reminding Utena of the woad Kaitlyn had used to paint her face with Pictish designs one Halloween. With careful precision, Korra used this to draw an upward-curving arc on Anthy's forehead, above the dot that was already there, then blued the dot itself with a gentle touch, making the mark a stylized representation of a third eye. "Anthy Tenjou, you performed your critical and delicate task with a cool head, a clear eye, and quick thinking," said Korra. "For this, you have earned the Mark of the Wise." While the others in the gathering applauded and cheered, the Avatar moved on to Utena, considered her for a moment with a phantom smile tugging at the corner of her sober ritual mask. Then, with a deft but decisive gesture, she dipped her thumb into her pot of woad and made a mark like a waxing crescent moon on the pink-haired Duelist's forehead, about where the honorary godhead Belldandy had painted on her for her wedding had been. "Utena Tenjou, you did a difficult and dangerous job with unwavering courage and determination," Korra told her. "For that, I grant you the Mark of the Brave." Korra took a couple of steps further down the line and stopped in front of Corwin, regarding him with an intent but hard-to-read expression. He looked back at her steadily, fully on board with the significance of the occasion, and in this moment there was none of the barely-suppressed playfulness that often existed between them. He knew the Avatar's culture of old; he knew what serious business this was to them, and thus to her. The room had gone quiet after Utena's round of applause, all eyes on the two of them. Even ever-smiling Karana was leaning slightly forward, her face still, right hand gripping Azana's left firmly. "Corwin Ravenhair," said Korra after a long moment. "I could rightfully recognize you with any one of -several- marks. You, too, were wise in your trial. You, too, were brave. And - " (here she cracked just the faintest hint of a wry smile, glancing quickly but significantly at Utena and Anthy) " - no one here could deny that you are very, very lucky." Nanuruq chuckled seismically, reminding Utena slightly of Corwin's Uncle Thor, before Korra's face went serious again and she continued, "But in the end, the choice was easy. For your leadership amid the ice, for the loyalty you command in others, and for the respect you show that loyalty... " At that, she took her blue-tinged thumb and drew it across his forehead in a thick, very slightly curved line, bisecting the circle of his godhead like a horizon and covering up its central dot entirely. "... the only just reward is the Mark of the Trusted," she said, looking him in the eye. Behind her, the room erupted in cheers, as if a critical goal had just been scored in a televised hockey game they were watching. Korra had to wait for it to die down if she intended to say any more, but she didn't seem to mind that; she used the time to walk around behind the three again and draw them together, doing her best to get her arms around all of them at once. In the event, it wasn't her but Nanuruq who spoke when the cheering died down. He rose from his seat and stood before the four of them, looking even more massive than he was from the unaccustomed gravity of his expression. "Korra," he said. "Born in this village in the first year of the Chun Tai era, only daughter of Tonraq and Senna. Is it your wish that these three be recognized also as members of that line?" Leaning forward between Corwin and Utena, her chin all but resting on the latter's shoulder, Korra replied seriously, "It is, Elder Nanuruq." The angakkuk regarded the three sternly, making eye contact with each in turn for a moment; all looked back at him with expressions neither challenging nor cowed. Satisfied, he nodded. "So be it," he said. Then he suddenly grinned, becoming instantly much more himself, and proceeded to hug all -four- of them, declaring as he did so, "Welcome to the Water Tribe, children." "I promised myself I wouldn't cry," said Garnet under the renewed cheering his declaration brought on; then, not entirely convincingly, she sobbed, "-Hold- me," and made a kind of decorative scarf of herself around Azana's slender neck. Karana snorted. "Smooth!" she remarked, winking at the dragon as her partner blushed almost to a match for her scales. Nanuruq and his family (including Azana, but not, to her professed dismay, Garnet) retired to the house across the street shortly thereafter, citing the early day upcoming. The Satos and Maki took themselves off to bunks in Korra's guest house at around the same time, for similar reasons. The Trinity and Korra went to the latter's living room, with daughter and dragon, to wind down together from the long, eventful day for a while. Utena was immediately struck, upon entering Korra's comfortable living room, by how well the decorators of the Avatar Suite at Republic City's posh Phoenix House Hotel had evoked the spirit of the Avatar's own dwelling. She wondered if they had worked from pictures, or maybe even visited the actual house. The blending of national styles atop a solid Water Tribe foundation was almost exactly the same. One thing the house had that the Avatar Suite didn't, though, was the item hanging in an obvious place of honor above the mantelpiece. Being the sort of person that she was, Utena couldn't help but go and admire it for a moment while Anthy and Annabelle got settled on the sofa. It was a sword, slim and elegant, of a style that (like many things in Diqiu) registered to Utena's eye as Chinese: a jian, if she remembered correctly, handsome in a clean, uncluttered way, with a discreetly gold-inlaid scabbard ending in a squared-off cap rather than a point and, she was interested to note, a medallion with an inlaid White Lotus pai sho tile at its pommel. "What's up?" Corwin asked, stepping up alongside her; then, seeing what she was looking at, he grinned. "Ah, of course. Cool sword anywhere in the vicinity? Utena'll find it." "Shut up," she said, bumping his shoulder with hers. "Just because there's no electronics here for you to take apart." Corwin laughed. "Are we already so predictable? That doesn't bode well." "Tea's up," said Korra cheerfully, returning from the kitchen with a paraphernalia-laden tray. Seeing Corwin and Utena by the fireplace, she laughed, then put the tray down on the coffee table and crossed to join them. "I see you've found Space Sword." Utena gave her a curious look. "'Space Sword'?" "Well, -technically- it's called Master Sokka's Meteor Sword," said Korra, taking the blade down from its peg, "but he always called it Space Sword, so... " Smiling, she offered the weapon to Utena. "Would you like to be introduced?" Utena blinked in surprise. "I'd love to," she said, accepting the sword and then drawing it carefully. At the sight of the blade - a deep, lustrous black - her eyebrows went up. "Oh wow. What a beautiful piece." She weighed it judiciously in her hand. "Lighter than I was expecting. What's it made of?" Then, before Korra could answer, she frowned and added, "It's called 'Meteor Sword', Utena, what do you think it's made of? Duh." Korra chuckled, patting her shoulder. "Don't sweat it, you've had a long day. It's true, though. They say Sokka forged it from a meteor sometime in early 100 ASC, before the end of the Hundred-Year War. When he died, he left it to his sister Katara. Some years later, she left it to me... somewhat to my surprise, since at the time I didn't know the first thing about swordsmanship," she added wryly. "I don't really consider it my own property, as such - it's a national treasure - but I keep it here on behalf of the tribe." Utena resheathed the sword and handed it reverently back, so that Korra could hang it back in its place. "Does it ever see any action these days?" she wondered. "I try to take it out for some air a time or two a year," Korra replied with a smile. "I remember the time you and Dad put on a show at Glacier Spirits," Corwin said with a nostalgic smile. "I was... what, six or seven? That was pretty badass. Kate couldn't figure out who to root for." Korra laughed and said, "Yeah, that was a pretty good day's work." Then, clapping them both on the shoulders, she said, "C'mon, let's have some tea before it gets cold." After an hour or so of tea and pleasant, low-key conversation, Korra glanced at the clock on the wall (like most benders, she rarely wore a watch, for obvious reasons), and then said to Corwin, "Hey, can you hold things down here for an hour or so? I've got something I want to show the ladies before we call it a night." Corwin looked puzzled for a moment, but only a moment; then he smiled an ah-of-course sort of smile and said, "Sure, I think I can manage that." "How hard can mmmrph," said Garnet, and then, when he released her snout from between thumb and forefinger, "Can you not do that?" "Only if you stop making it necessary," Corwin replied mildly. All suited up against the polar chill - although, Utena noted, it was really not anything like as cold as she'd been -expecting- a place 70-some degrees below the equator to be - the three women crunched across virgin snow toward the ridge outside of town. Above, brilliantly visible in a sky all but devoid of light pollution, a spectacular aurora was going on, painting the velvet night in rippling sheets of green and rose pink, almost bright enough to read by. "What did Nanuruq's question mean, Korra - 'members of that line'?" asked Anthy as she walked, using Rosenjaeger as a walking staff in one hand, her other hand in Utena's. "It comes out sort of awkwardly in translation," Korra said. "We don't really have family lines as you guys know them - I mean, we don't have surnames, so it'd be hard to keep track of - but we do have a tradition sort of like what you would call adoption. It - hmm. This is going to take a little explaining." "Please - go on," said Anthy. Beside her, Utena nodded. "Hmm. OK, well... see, there's no such thing as an orphan in the Water Tribes," said Korra. "If a child's parents die, which used to happen a lot more often than it does now, someone will always step up and make him or her a member of their own family. Sometimes it's even done when a child's parents are -alive,- if they already have one and another couple in the village doesn't, or can't, have one of their own. It doesn't mean the birth parents don't -want- their second child," she hastened to add, "but it's a way of strengthening the community. In the old days, when survival itself was at a premium, it was also the most efficient way to distribute the load." "Makes sense," said Utena. "Like you said this morning, this is a hard land. Before modern times, just living here must've been pretty precarious." Korra nodded. "Not even that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, the point is, family runs deep with us, but it's not necessarily dictated by biology. I think that's something you guys can probably relate to better than most," she added with a knowing little smile, which Anthy and Utena both returned. "When we take qallunaat - foreigners - into the Tribe, well... naturally, they don't have any family among us. If they did, they wouldn't be qallunaat in the first place. So they're technically orphans... " "... And there's no such thing as an orphan in the Water Tribes," Anthy said, her smile still knowing, but much less little. "Exactly," said Korra, grinning. "So I sort of got Mom and Dad to adopt you. Spoke for them, admittedly, but... I don't think they would mind." "That's... wow. Thank you," said Utena. "A lot of people have honored us in a lot of ways since we came to Diqiu, but that goes above and beyond." "Yes," Anthy agreed quietly. "Thank you." Korra's face, bathed in the aurora, was still wearing a sentimental grin as she crossed behind Anthy and leaned forward between the two of them, an arm over each woman's shoulders. "You're welcome," she said, giving them both a squeeze. "Thank -you.- You guys being around... you've given me back stuff I didn't even realize I missed." A glance sufficed, between the Rose Prince and her wife, for the one to ask a silent question and the other to answer it: No, not yet. Recognizing it, Utena nodded almost imperceptibly and said nothing; only reached up to cover Korra's mittened hand on her right shoulder with her own as they all walked, half-embraced, up the ridge. "Now, as for what I wanted you to see, well... it's not just the aurora overhead," said Korra as they approached the top. Timing her next remark precisely, she added just as they crested the ridge, "Ladies... I give you the true Southern Lights." From the top of the ridge, they could see for miles to the south, out across what looked from here like an endless flat expanse of ice and snow. It seemed to glow in the light from the aurora, rippling and shifting in time with it, like a vast sheet of frosted glass... ... and some miles distant, off on the southern horizon, rose a column of light, shimmering and coruscant, which broadened high above and diffused into the aurora that overspread the whole polar sky. It reminded Utena slightly of the Everlight, the Beacon of Creation that burned at the pinnacle of Valaskjalf, Odin's palace in the center of Asgard. That, too, was a column of light that reached to the highest point of the sky; but it neither shimmered nor danced, nor was it the source of the Golden City's similarly epic aurorae. "Oh... -my,-" Anthy murmured, her breath making a cloud in front of her. "It's beautiful," Utena agreed. Korra led them a few paces down the other side of the ridge, then sat down in the snow and lay back against the face of the slope as if about to make a snow angel. The others followed suit, stretching out full-length on the rising ground. The position was surprisingly comfortable, owing to the thick snowpack, and their Water Tribe clothes kept them warm and dry as they lay and watched the lights dance and sparkle. Half an hour or more elapsed before any of them spoke again. "When I told people I was changing my major to engineering after the earthquake," Korra mused, the show high above reflecting from her eyes, "a few of them warned me that I shouldn't do it, because if I studied physics I would lose respect for the spirits. This was a thing people were worried about generally when science and technology started to come into Diqiu in a big way - the perception that scientific understanding is somehow disrespectful of the world's wonders. "I didn't listen to them - don't act so surprised," she went on, drawing a snort of laughter from Utena. "And when I did actually take those classes, I found that I was right - those people didn't know what they were talking about. Because... understanding how these things work only makes them -more- amazing." She stretched a hand up as if reaching for the aurora and went on, "Spirits of high, thin air and solar wind, magnetism and ionized gas plasma, dancing miles above us, at the very edge of the cold silence. Their colors defined by the distances electrons have to travel in order to fall back to their proper energy states. Visible proof that we all owe them our lives." She lowered the hand so that it was indicating the fountain of light that rose from the far horizon, palm upturned and open. "That by them, this fragile little sphere where we live is protected from forces we've only recently become able to imagine." Korra lowered her hand the rest of the way and turned her head to look Utena in the face. "How could I, of -all- people, fail to respect that?" "The aurorae here are spirits?" Utena asked. "All aurorae are spirits," Korra replied. "-And- they're what science says they are. That's my point. The world - not just this world, not just -my- world, but -all- the world - is full of wonder." Then, her eyes lighting up with recognition, she added, "Hey, speaking of spirits, here comes one now." Utena looked away from her face to see that she was right. Part of the column of spirit light had separated from the rest and was approaching them across the snowy emptiness between, growing larger, brighter, and more distinct in their view as it approached. As the three women rose to their feet, the approaching spirit settled to the ground near them and resolved from a hazy cloud to a huge, semi- transparent creature of light. Cool arctic white limned with an aura of purest green, it had the burly, powerful aspect of an enormous phantom beast the size of a small house, gazing down at them with a look of benevolent intelligence in its large, shining blue eyes. "Hello, old friend," said Korra with a fond smile. The spirit bowed its great head in respectful reply. "Ladies, I want you to meet another dear friend of mine. Utena Tenjou, Anthy Tenjou: This is Nanuq, the Great Bear of the South. He's the patron of my tribe and guardian of our ancient land." Nanuq bent down and touched his nose first to Anthy's forehead, then Utena's, causing the marks Korra had painted there earlier to glow momentarily, like Corwin's AEsir brand did when he was exercising his divine power. Then, with another ponderous nod to the three of them, he turned and lumbered back down the ridge, still in complete silence, dissolving back into aurora light a few paces away. "What just happened?" asked Utena, her voice hushed. "Nanuq gave you his blessing," Korra said, sounding pleased and slightly surprised. "That was completely spontaneous on his part," she assured them. "Contrary to popular belief, I don't 'command' spirits, I only talk to them - and I would never presume to command one so great and ancient as Grandfather Bear, in any case." She grinned at them. "Maybe he heard what you said about 'above and beyond' and decided to top me. Anyway, we'd better head back. Who knows what kind of chaos is happening while we're out here?" "Astonishing," said Anthy. "There are wonders aplenty in Cephiro," she explained as the three started back up the ridge, "but we have nothing to compare with Diqiu's spirits. Not any more. There are tales of them in times past, but I fear... they may not have survived the catastrophe that brought the three of us together." "You might be surprised," Korra told her. "Spirits are pretty resilient. They might just be hiding. Ours had hardly been seen outside the Spirit World for ten thousand years before I opened the portals in 171... and now they're everywhere. A lot of the time you don't even notice them, but they're there. Heck, there's even one teaching at the private school Karana and Azana went to, up in the Fire Nation." She grinned again, putting a hand on Anthy's shoulder. "Hey, if you want, I can go help you look for them sometime." "That would be... well, I don't want to get my hopes up, but it would be amazing, if there were still any to be found." Utena paused at the top of the ridge, looked back, and then said, "Huh. I just realized - he -was- a bear. I mean, -just- a bear, not a bear dog." Korra nodded. "Yeah, a lot of spirits are like that. They're kind of weird that way. There are a few parageneticists who have theories, but it's not what you would call a really well-developed field," she added with a grin. They got back to Korra's house, giggling about what mayhem they might find, only to discover that - slightly to Utena's disappointment - nothing of the kind had occasioned. The house was dim and quiet, most of the lights out and the one by the couch down low, and everyone - Corwin, Annabelle and Garnet on the couch, Makoto curled up in an armchair, Niri sprawled like a living rug in the middle of the floor - peacefully asleep. "He really is turning out to be good at this dad thing," Utena mused quietly, regarding the scene. "Mm-hmm," Korra agreed. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14 771 EAST CHRISTIE AVENUE NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI The grandfather clock in the front room was just striking 10 AM when Anne Cross arrived in the hall, bounding down the stairs two at a time with her overnight bag in one hand and her sword in the other. Kaitlyn-sensei was already there waiting for her, an Aldera 2408 promotional backpack - part of the swag from Juri's brief but eventful career as an Olympic fencer - slung on one of her shoulders. Both women were dressed all wrong for the weather. It was a beautiful spring day outside, yet they were bundled up in their warmest clothes, with heavy coats and knit caps; Kaitlyn was even wearing a pair of big clodhopping "Mickey Mouse" cold-weather boots, the military-surplus kind with the aviation pressure relief valve on the side. "All set?" Kate asked her student. "All set," Anne confirmed, then added with a wry grin, "Assuming our ride gets here before I melt." Sergei the tiger gave her what she perceived as a dubious look, as if to remark that he had his fur on all the time, and it wasn't a problem for -him,- so what was she complaining about? Before Kate could reply, the frosted floor-to-ceiling window next to the front door began to glow, rays of yellow light fanning out from the center of the panel to suffuse its whole surface, and then Corwin emerged as if stepping through a waterfall. "Morning," he said cheerfully. Like them, he was dressed in polar gear. His appeared to be mostly fur and hide, reminding Anne of the ancient movie they'd watched in Mr. Hall's social studies class, about the people who had lived in the Arctic on pre-Contact Earth. He could've done with some beard maintenance, but otherwise showed few signs of being a man who had a slightly-less-than-a-month-old offspring to contend with. "Good morning, Corwin," said Kate, giving him a hug. "Shall we?" "Step this way, ladies and tiger," he replied, gesturing to the still-glowing window. "Mind the gap." Anne thought he was being funny until she stepped through the sheet of light, at which point she discovered that there -was- a slight discontinuity - the window he'd used on the other side didn't go quite all the way to the ground. As she emerged, careful not to trip (and not to think too hard about what she might be tripping -on-, given that she was traversing a dimensional barrier as well as a lot of interstellar space in that one step), the cold struck her in the face, momentarily taking her breath away. If she'd been wearing glasses, she fancied they'd have frosted over instantly. In fact, looking at Kaitlyn, she saw that her sensei's actually had. On the other hand, she no longer regretted her heavy wool coat or the scarf around her neck, and once she got her bearings, she realized that the place where she had just arrived was absolutely -gorgeous-. The town itself was not so special, just a small collection of buildings in a style her instincts automatically (if incorrectly) tagged as "Sort of Viking, Maybe", but it was set in a bowl of craggy hills and snowy mountains, and the sky those mountains reared up toward was huge and of a piercingly pure blue. Anne was momentarily distracted from this reflection by the sound of a very large dog barking for joy, and then the peerless sight of Niri - all eight feet and probably a thousand pounds of her - actually -capering- with delight as she and Serge renewed their acquaintance. Korra was still laughing about it herself as she trotted over to hug first Kate, then Anne. "Hey, you two!" she declared. "Welcome to my hometown. Or welcome back, in Kate's case. Kate, you remember Nanuruq and Kejna?" The morning was a whirl of introductions (or in most cases REintroductions, for Kate) and little discoveries. Preparations for the evening's festival were in full swing by the time the New Avalon contingent arrived, with people out hanging up decorations or otherwise sprucing up the broad common space in the middle of town. At one end, some were constructing what was obviously the burn pile for a bonfire; at the other, another group was setting up a small stage, alongside which loomed a large shape covered in a white cloth. Around the perimeter, still other townsfolk were setting up what looked like market stalls. The whole scene hummed with a sense of cheerful bustle. At midafternoon, Nall caused an enormous ruckus by arriving in the most ostentatious possible style, setting down in the middle of the common with a great flourish of his feathered wings before furling them and lowering his head to let his passenger disembark. Utena was intrigued to see the good people of Senna's reaction to such blatant draconic showoffery: they rushed -toward- the common, exclaiming excitedly, many of them scrambling for cameras. He preened for them a bit, making Utena roll her eyes and Anthy laugh, before causing another ripple of excitement by switching to his humanoid form right there in front of everybody. Next to all that, nobody seemed to notice Lhakpa for a moment, which was unusual in the experience of most people who knew her. Admittedly, she wasn't looking her best, bundled up in Air Nomad foul- weather gear with her hair in hopeless disarray, but even under the circumstances she managed to make looking windblown and slightly chapped seem glamorous somehow. "Wow, Nall," Maki remarked as she and the others went to greet the newest arrivals. "Could you possibly have oversold that a little more?" Korra grinned. "I hope you've got your ID on you. As soon as some of these pictures hit the lightningweb, Master Chin's liable to be on the next Nanisivik flight out of Tenzin International thinking you're one of the local rarities, come out of hiding." "Eh, it's all good, I warned him ahead of time," said Nall. "Good plan," she told him. Then, turning to Lhakpa, she asked, "How'd you get Jinora to agree to this? She's not usually big on random field trips at your age." Lhakpa smiled the smile of a person who is up to something and replied, "Oh, as far as Great-gran-gran knows, I've gone to the Southern Air Temple." Adopting a slightly mocking version of a meditative stance, she added, "The better to Reflect Upon the Avatars of the Past, you know." "Ahh," said Korra, nodding, then added conversationally, "You don't seriously think you got away with that, do you?" Lhakpa frowned and started to ask what she meant, but before she had a chance, Nanuruq arrived to find out what all the commotion was about, and matters became too boomy and bear-huggy for meaningful conversation. Preparations for the festival continued into the short polar afternoon. By dusk, everything was set up, and a small group of the village's swiftest runners were making a ceremonial circuit of the common, lighting the evenly spaced decorative torches that were necessary to give the occasion its proper ambience. The village common was starting to fill up, both with residents and visitors arriving in town from neighboring (relatively speaking) communities. Off to the northwest, the sun plunged behind the mountains as if in a hurry to be done with the day, briefly painting that corner of the sky in spectacular roseate colors while, at the opposite end, the aurora australis was already starting to flicker among the emerging stars. It was into this colorfully expectant atmosphere that another aerial visitor arrived: the great cream-and-brown bulk of a sky bison, swooping in from the north to land just about where Nall had a few hours before. Vayu - Corwin would've known him anywhere - drew almost as great a crowd as Nall had, and cameras flashed anew in the twilight as his rider alighted from his head. Unlike Lhakpa, Nyima was dressed in the most formal of Air Nomad robes, the sort worn by master airbenders for ceremonial and state occasions - similar to the White Lotus dress robes she'd worn to help Cheong and Kaitlyn collect Emily Wong, but in the standard Air Nomad palette of saffron, yellow, and red. This had a cloak, but was otherwise startlingly lightweight-looking for this weather. She was even bareheaded, though at least by now her hair had grown back in to the point where her scalp wasn't readily visible. "Greetings, Elder Nanuruq," she said, making her most elegant airbender courtesy to the man in the obvious angakkuk finery. "I am Master Nyima of the Central Air Temple. The Apsara Lama sends her most cordial regards on the occasion of this great celebration." Corwin remarked to himself with a little smile that, poor girl, she was probably expecting the village's chief notable to show a little gravitas at this point - and assuming that Nanuruq wouldn't remember that they had met before. Nyima had only been seven the one time she'd been here before, after all, and she had the habit of thinking herself unmemorable. What she got, however, was not a waterbender salute and some fine words in reply; it was a cry of "Great spirits, look at you!" that people probably heard over in Qurluqtuq and a hug that even a startled master airbender couldn't quite evade. Nyima was still a little red-faced and flustered as Nanuruq ushered her over to display her to Kejna ("you remember, she was only about this high!") and show her that Korra's various other friends were already on hand. If she were further surprised in any way to find Lhakpa among the group that awaited her, she showed no sign; showed, in fact, no sign that she had even -noticed- her sister among them, a feat which Lhakpa did not quite manage to reciprocate fully. Within an hour, night had fully fallen and the festival was underway. Despite its foreboding name, the Falling Dark Festival was in no way a gloomy or fearful affair. Rather, it had the air of a scaled-up family gathering, warm and convivial but also relaxed and casual. Even Korra herself was obviously not principally an Eminent Personage to these people, but part of their family (often literally), and as part of this community celebration she was welcomed home as such, not as some kind of exalted stranger. So, too, were Karana, who was plainly also a sort of local celebrity, and Azana, who appeared not far behind her in the esteem of many townsfolk. Observing that last fact, and knowing what she had lately learned about the history of this world, Anthy found it pleasing that Karana's relations and neighbors had found it possible to take a foreigner - a firebender, no less - to their hearts so completely... and, in light of it, less surprising that they had done likewise for Corwin and his family, including herself. In spite of - perhaps because of - the cold ruggedness of their homeland, these were a warm and kindly people, both big- and open-hearted. It reminded her a bit of the way Utena's Duelist family had accepted -her-, the perennial outsider, when she had arrived, still a bit shell-shocked and timorous, in their midst. The thought put her in a warm and happy frame of mind, not that any other kind would've been easy to sustain in the face of all the easy congeniality that was happening all around her. Even the lingering, faintly awkward tension between the airbender sisters couldn't put a dent in the mood (and both of them seemed to be making an effort to keep it from threatening to do so, which struck Anthy as encouragingly tactful on Lhakpa's part). At one point fairly early on, most of the from-far-away contingent were standing all together at one of the booths near the middle of the Common, enjoying some sort of mulled cider beverage served hot in wooden mugs, when Karana appeared out of the crowd and joined them. At some point that morning, she'd sewn a panel of light-blue fabric (actually a piece cut from a T-shirt) onto the front of her amautik. This bore the stylized likeness of Korra's face, rendered as a semi-abstract smiley-face icon. Many people in town had attached such items to their coats, in fact - it was evidently something of a tradition - but as far as Corwin had noticed, only Karana had taken a black marker and captioned hers "GRAN-GRAN!" in big, cheerful letters. Like the image of Korra on her parka, Karana was smiling from ear to ear as she approached. In her amaut, she carried a baby, a little older than Annabelle; this one was able to hold up her head and look around, which she was doing with every appearance of happy interest in the sights and sounds of the festival all around. "Hey, gang!" said Karana cheerfully. "Isn't this great? Gonna be the best one for years, I can feel it already." "Whose baby have you borrowed this time?" asked Anthy with a smile. "Ha, remember what I told you about being the world's greatest honorary aunt?" Karana asked in reply. "Turns out I am in fact the world's greatest -actual- aunt! Have been for nearly nine months now, and NOBODY TOLD ME." She shook her head. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder about these people. Anyway, everybody, this is my niece... " She paused, waiting until Azana was in the midst of taking a sip of her cider, then added with a slightly wicked grin, "... Kazana!" Azana (no K) sputtered, nearly spraying Corwin with hot cider, but managed to avert that catastrophe and get it down instead. "And you thought Tausi didn't approve of you," said Karana with a smug little smile as her partner gave her a reproachful look. "Aw, she's a cutie," said Garnet, leaning in for a closer look, but - lesson learned - being careful to stay out of grabbing distance. "How did you go nine months without learning that your brother and his wife have a child?" Maki wondered. "Well, Mom and Dad didn't think to mention it because they assumed Tausi would," said Karana. She folded her arms with a little scowl. "And of course he -didn't.- When I called him on it a minute ago, he just said 'Duhhhh, I didn't think you'd be interested,'" she added in an exaggerated dumb-guy voice. "That's... actually not hard to believe at all," said Azana after a moment's consideration. "I love my big brother," Karana said, "but sometimes I just want to punch him right in the head. Not that that would improve matters any, so I suppose I won't, huh," she added with a wry look over her shoulder at her niece, who giggled at the expression. Not long after, the village elders took to the little stage at the far end of the common and signaled for attention. From all around the common, the people of Senna and their visitors converged, momentarily suspending all other pursuits to gather before the stage; once they were all together and quieted down a bit, Nanuruq spoke (requiring, Utena noted with a smile, no PA system to be heard): "Friends, neighbors, we gather as we always do, to bid the Sun farewell for another winter. But we should make it clear to our new brother and sisters, and our visiting friends, that we do not do this in a spirit of gloom or fear. This festival is not ironically named - for we of the Southern Water Tribe do not fear the polar night! We welcome it, we embrace it, as one of the things that makes our home what it is. A unique place. A place of extremes. A place to be lived with, not in; to be worked with, not against." Sounds of agreement and approval rose from the crowd; becoming still more animated, Nanuruq went on, "The South Pole is not a place to be 'tamed'!" "No!" someone cried. "No more than -we- are -people- to be tamed!" Nanuruq thundered. "Never!" "Hear him!" "And so we gather to -celebrate- the fall of night," the angakkuk went on, his sonorous voice moderating slightly. "Not in fear but in hope. As we wait for the Sun to return, the dark brings us all the closer to our old and treasured friend, Yue, the Moon." Holding up an admonishing finger, he added, "But here in Senna, she's not the -only- dear friend we gather to celebrate on this day! Today is also the anniversary of our village's most famous and honored daughter. She doesn't like us to make a fuss about her, and for most of the year we don't... " He grinned mischievously. "... but she can't escape it on her birthday. Brothers and sisters, Avatar Korra!" As her neighbors (and in many cases distant relatives) cheered and applauded around her, Korra smiled an embarrassed, indulgent smile and, red-faced, raised her hand in a self-deprecating little wave, letting them get on with it. "For those few of you who may not know, Korra has a longstanding policy against letting people put up statues in her honor," said Nanuruq once the cheering died down. "As part of our celebration of her birthday, we ignore -that- as well," he added, drawing a laugh. "This year's has been constructed under the supervision of another of our own who has gone on to fame and fortune on the Outside, but never forgotten her roots. Here to unveil her creation is my very own daughter - number seven of the Temple Island Fire Ferrets - Karana!" Sporting a huge grin and clearly not at -all- embarrassed about the cheers and applause of her neighbors, Karana bounded onto the stage, still packing her niece. A laugh made the rounds as people noticed the caption on her smiley-Korra decoration. "Hello!" she declared. "I'm glad the league schedule worked out so I could get home for the festival this time. I'd like to thank the Elders for choosing me to design this year's sculpture, and no, Mom and Dad didn't vote," she quipped with a wink, drawing another laugh. "Anyway! Happy birthday, Korra. I call this 'The Journey', and I hope you like it." At a signal from her, a small ring of floodlights arranged around the white-draped object next to the stage flicked on, bathing it in a clean, bright light. A group of the village's youth hauled on ropes strategically affixed to the white cloth covering the sculpture, pulling it clear in such a way that it didn't drag over the artwork itself. As it fluttered away, what lay beneath almost seemed to glow in the floodlights, and the festival-goers made a delighted sound. As it did every year, the sculpture depicted Korra, but this year she wasn't alone. Meticulously rendered at approximately twice lifesize, she sat astride a polar bear dog, sitting tall in the saddle. Her face was rendered in a cheerful smile, looking optimistically off to whatever she was riding toward... ... and walking along with them, also wrought in loving detail, were Anthy, Utena, and Corwin, shown in the same Water Tribe-style clothes the real ones were wearing a few yards away. Anthy was even carrying Annabelle in her amaut and Garnet on her shoulder, hiking with staff in hand. Utena and Corwin seemed to be consulting a document of some kind, perhaps a map. Anthy, though slightly preoccupied being surprised by their inclusion, couldn't suppress a giggle at how perfectly Corwin's "well, -I- don't know" face had been captured by the sculptor. Looking at the piece, her own likeness and those of her friends perfectly captured in matte-finished ice that gleamed like frosted glass, Korra felt her eyes tearing up and didn't bother fighting it. It was a perfect metaphoric encapsulation of how she'd come to feel, lately, with the three - four, five - of them having burst so suddenly and colorfully into her life. Life -was- a journey, she had always felt it so, and Corwin's family had joined her on the road... a road which of late had begun to seem a bit lonely. She wondered how Karana knew all that well enough to capture it so perfectly in ice. Before she could explore the thought too deeply, she looked at the sculpture more closely - and a fresh wave of sentiment washed over her as she realized that the polar bear dog her icy representation was riding wasn't Niri. The differences were very subtle - she suspected that, apart from the artist, she was the only person there who would notice them - but there they were, unmistakable. That was -Naga,- Niri's several-greats-grandmother: the original polar bear dog Korra had found as an orphaned pup and raised by hand when she herself was but a child, establishing the first and only line of domesticated polar bear dogs to be found anywhere in the world. How did you know? she wondered again, looking at Karana's beaming profile as the younger woman stood and enjoyed the others' admiration of her handiwork. There's more to that girl than I sometimes assume, Korra told herself, dashing at her happy tears before they could freeze on her face. I have to remember that. After the unveiling, most of those gathered adjourned to the other end of the common, and it became obvious now why the bonfire pile was set up there: so that the fire's heat wouldn't endanger the ice sculpture. Karana cajoled Azana into lighting it, naturally, and everyone seemed delighted with the result; then the drums came out and the dancing started. A short while later, while Karana (having returned her niece to her sister-in-law) was taking a break from drumming and getting another cider with Azana, a teenage boy broke away from a group of his peers off to one side and came over to join them. "Hey, Kuvi, what's up?" Karana asked. "Having a good time?" "Hey, Karana," said the boy, grinning. "Great so far. Nice work on this year's statue." "Thanks. You remember Azana?" "Sure," Kuvi said with a nod. "How've you been?" "So far, so good," said Azana, smiling. Pleasantries observed, Kuvi leaned toward Karana with a slightly furtive expression, gestured vaguely toward another part of the common, and said, "Do you know who that is?" Karana looked. "Which one, there's like 20 people over there," she said wryly. Kuvi tried to point more specifically without completely abandoning discretion. "Oh, that's Nyima," said Karana. Then she gave the young man a curious look and added, "Why?" "She's amazing," said Kuvi. Azana had to concentrate quite hard not to laugh. He would probably have taken it the wrong way, either assuming she was mocking him or his taste in girls, when really she just found the whole business entertaining on its own merits. Karana glanced at her, made sure she was going to be able to maintain control, then turned back to the boy and said, "She's an -Air Nomad-, Kuvi." Kuvi shrugged. "Well, OK, and?" Karana thought about that for a second, then conceded, "Yeah, fair enough. C'mon, I'll introduce you," she said, then handed her cider to Azana, clapped Kuvi on the shoulder, and set briskly off across the common. Nyima was standing off to one side watching the festivities, but she wasn't in wallflower mode; just observing. She had a particular fondness for ancient traditional celebrations, and despite the relatively recent addition of Avatar Korra's birthday to the program, the Falling Dark Festival was old indeed. As old as the Water Tribe itself, as old as waterbenders' reverence for the Moon Spirit. In other parts of the South Pole, she knew, the date of the festival still varied, moving to coincide with the first full moon after the fall equinox. Only in this region did it always fall on April 14, and only for the last 120 or so years. She looked up at the moon, gleaming down amid the shimmering aurora, and smiled to herself. She doubted very much whether Yue minded the people of Senna and its environs moving their holiday to celebrate their favorite native daughter as well. That train of thought was interrupted as Karana approached, half-leading and half-dragging a startled-looking youth of about Nyima's own age along with her. She thought she detected a resemblance between them as they approached, and for a moment she wondered whether he might be Karana's younger brother Bori; but then she remembered that he was about Corwin's age, not in his middle teens. Karana solved the mystery a moment later, saying, "Nyima! Hey. This is my cousin Kuviuutuq." Putting a hand on the boy's shoulder, she grinned and went on, "I'll warn you now, he's only a so-so hunter, but hey, you're a vegetarian, so it's all good, right? Plus, he tells good stories, so he'll probably make a passable angakkuk in a few years." With a wink, she added, "You could totally do worse, is what I'm saying." "Karana!" Kuvi blurted, his face going crimson (which, in fairness, was no more than Nyima's was doing). "Kuvi," Karana went on, undaunted, "this is Master Nyima. She grew up on an island full of monks, but don't let that fool you, she's pretty hardcore." Pushing the two teenagers to within arm's length of each other, she said, "You kids have fun now," and then turned and trotted back to Azana, her mission accomplished. "... Are you sure that was a good idea, 'Rana?" asked Azana, handing her partner back her cup of cider. Karana grinned and knocked back what remained in the cup. "Oh, relax, Kuvi's even more afraid of girls than Bori used to be." She gestured with the empty vessel at her cousin and Nyima, now out of earshot. It was plain from their red faces and awkward body language that they were having a very tentative conversation indeed... but they were still -having- one, and Karana's grin became a bit sentimental as she added, "If they -really- hit it off tonight, -maybe- he'll ask her to the movers when they're about 20. Which is more or less Nyima's speed too, I expect." She elbowed Azana. "C'mon, tell me they aren't cute together." "... Adorable, actually," Azana conceded after a moment's consideration. "Where -is- Bori?" she wondered. "Med school in Nani," Karana replied. "Finals in a couple of weeks, so he didn't think he could get away. He'll be free for Glacier Spirits, though." She smiled slyly and added, "And looking forward to seeing you again, no doubt." "Well," said Azana with mock pragmatism, "in my line of work, a doctor -would- be pretty handy... " Then she smiled, finished her own cider, and they went to turn in the cups and rejoin the drum dance. As such things all but inevitably do in societies with a significant cultural interest in martial arts, the dance blended into a series of demonstrations, both by the village's several waterbenders and some non-bending members of the local militia. A few of the visitors got in on the action as well. Karana and Azana, after much cajoling from friends and neighbors (not least Karana's parents), put on a brief exhibition of some of their flashiest pro-bending tricks, at one point dragooning Corwin to stand in again for the absent Xiang Wan. Maki, of course, was more than happy to demonstrate some of her Kyoshi Warrior techniques. To everyone's slight surprise, even Nyima and Lhakpa got into the spirit of the thing, stepping past recent events to show off some airbender moves, their coordination perfect despite the lingering tension between them. After them, the occasion seemed to be reaching a sort of natural climax. When they finished their kata, bowed, and left the impromptu dueling ring that had developed spontaneously in the middle of the common, people began to call Korra's name. She waved them off at first, with a good-natured smile, insisting that it wasn't her night to show off; but they wouldn't be denied, and soon the entire village seemed to be in on the act, chanting her name like the crowd at a ballgame. There were only a few hundred of them, but in this familiar space, after such an evening, their energy was all but irresistible. She seemed just about to give in and show them a thing or two... ... when, with a slightly wicked little smile, Anthy caught her eye. With a quick, hard-to-follow movement of her right hand, the Cephirean Priestess was suddenly holding two roses, one white, the other an almost-iridescent pale blue. Behind her, Utena grinned and raised a challenging eyebrow. Korra blinked in surprise, then started to spread her hands in a shrug - no weapon! - before she noticed that Karana had come up next to her and was offering her one: Master Sokka's Meteor Sword, retrieved at a run from her house. For a moment, she was completely baffled, looking from her young relative to the Priestess to the Prince, then at Corwin, curious as to -his- reaction to this development. He grinned, gave her a wink, and suddenly it all just -made sense- somehow. She returned the grin, then turned to Karana, saluted her gravely, and drew the Meteor Sword from its scabbard. With the black blade in hand, she strode out into the middle of the dueling ring, to the tumultuous cheering of her hometown crowd. Utena and Anthy walked out to meet her. With great ceremony, Anthy affixed the blue rose to Korra's anorak and the white to Utena's, then silenced the crowd with awe by drawing the sword of Utena's heart from her in a blaze of light and placing it in her hand. Smiling beatifically, Anthy bowed with an airbender salute to the Avatar, kissed her husband, and withdrew, crossing to stand by Corwin and the others. For a long, silent moment, Korra and Utena just stood regarding each other, their faces still, almost solemn. Then Utena grinned, Korra did likewise, and the duel began. /* doa "Eiyuu (Hero)" _Ultraman Nexus_ (2004) */ They started out, as Kate and Utena had started out in the first rose duel Anne Cross had ever seen, with just their swords and the skills they had for wielding them - no bending, no overt magic, nothing but muscle and nerve and steel. In this, they were about evenly matched. Utena was a few inches taller, her reach commensurately longer, and she still had the raw talent that had seen her through a deadly tournament with virtually no training in the handling of a blade, now tempered with seven years' hard-fought experience; but Korra was wily, with a century and more of life on the front line behind her, even if most of it hadn't been swordfights. "I've never seen anyone handle a sword like Korra does before," Juniper murmured to her sensei a minute or so into the display. "Mm," Kate agreed softly. "I'm told that when I was around two, not long after she first met Dad, she more or less -hypnotized- me by doing an exercise in the dojo at our house with a jian he used to have. There's a reason they call it 'the gentleman of weapons'." She smiled. "I don't remember that day directly - I was much too young - but it left a mark on me, all the same. When I was little, I thought kenjutsu was sort of... brutal. Ungraceful. It was only later I learned to appreciate the katana's directness and elegance... but I've always had a special place in my heart for the jian." Anne nodded, but said nothing more; she was too absorbed in the spectacle before her. Both women were superb athletes, perfectly in tune with their bodies' capabilities and limits. Both were adept, not to say inspired, improvisers with an almost extrasensory level of situational awareness. And neither seemed to have been paying attention the day "moderation" was the topic of discussion in class. If they had confined themselves solely to this level, the battle that ensued would still have been one of the most exciting and technically impressive most of the people watching it had ever seen... ... but, of course, Korra was Korra and Utena was Utena, so they didn't. Korra escalated first, twisting away from Utena's lightning riposte, then launching a pneumatic shockwave, like the one she'd tried on Corwin during their sparring match on the latter's wedding day, as a natural complement to the move. Corwin had replied with an earthbending counter, summoning a windbreak from the ground, but Utena neither had nor, evidently, required such recourse. Instead, her teeth showing in a fierce little grin, she parried the wave of compressed air with her sword; and to the astonishment of most onlookers, the black-streaked silver blade of the Heart of the Rose -cleaved the wind,- the scarlet runes of the Valkyries' Creed rising on the sides of the slender blade as the divided shockwave passed to either side of her and blasted up clouds of snow. These hid her from view, but only for an instant - whereupon she burst from the curtain of ice crystals as if fired from a cannon, uttering a Klingonese battlecry she'd learned from Professor Kraalgh and trailing a faint but distinctly visible crimson aura behind her. At the sight of this suddenly amplified form of her foe, Korra grinned as well and shifted up another gear. Taking a half-step back, she removed a hand from Space Sword's grip and used it to raise a sheet of the snowpack from underfoot, hardening it into a glittering wall of solid ice - - which held Utena up about as much as the decorative banner across the stadium entrance holds up a football team at the start of the game. It smashed into chunks as if rammed by a truck as the Prince of Cephiro, her aura now a brilliantly obvious scarlet, sprang right through it. Those who were watching closely - and that was basically everybody here - noticed an interesting undercurrent as the duel between the Avatar and the Prince heated up: with every escalation, the smiles on both women's faces grew wider. Neither one became grim or purposeful as their levels of concentration and commitment ramped ever upward; instead, both displayed nothing but an ever-increasing joy of battle. It was a -fierce- joy, to be certain, but it was joy, all the same. Facing an opponent surrounded by shining, irresistible power of a kind rarely seen in Diqiu before, not one element or another but seemingly just pure energy, Korra unpacked her entire toolbox in response. Unleashing all four elements in the face of Utena's onslaught, she employed every technique she knew in a counteroffensive that could have stymied an army. Very few people, benders or not, could expect to stand for long against the absolutely undivided attention of a fully realized, highly experienced Avatar, but Utena Tenjou did far more than merely hold her own: She rose to meet the challenge, her technique becoming yet swifter and surer. She was fully in the Zone, with a counter to hand for everything Korra offered. Dauntless and unhesitating, she faced and conquered situations that would have terrified an ordinary mortal: springing with superhuman agility and speed between slabs of stone and sheets of ice, dodging whips of freezing water by hairsbreadths, turning aside blasts of nearly-solid air and sizzling streams of compressed fire as though they were thrown softballs. In one furious full-on rush, she bulled through everything Korra threw at her and closed to within grappling range of the Avatar, too close for either woman to use her sword effectively. Korra, by far the more experienced hand-to-hand fighter, tried for a leg sweep, but she herself had already taught Utena how to counter that: the Rose Prince jumped over it, spun into an airbender-style evasion, and drove out an elbow to the upper chest that dropped the Avatar cleanly to the ground - and wrenched a collective gasp from everyone in Senna. Korra slid a few yards across the smooth-packed snow of the arena, the wind driven out of her; as she went, her eyes flashed, the white glow of the Avatar State blanking out the blue merriment that had all but crackled in them throughout the duel. Before she would've come to a halt, she twisted her body into an Air Nomad whirlwind kick, springing upward in a swirl of ice chips and hard air to a single-handed handstand and sending off a titanic crescent shockwave toward Utena in the process. Without time or space to perform a proper counter, Utena set herself (like an earthbender, several observers noticed) and just -took- it, letting it drive her clean to the edge of the arena but keeping her feet. She came to rest within arm's length of Anthy, her long pink hair and the slack in her parka sleeves whipping. Still in motion, never stopping, Korra completed the handspring and somersaulted upright, but not to her feet. The cyclone kick, fueled by the full power of the Avatar State, had enclosed her in a spherical shell of rushing air, within which she levitated, toes not quite touching the ground. Whirling once, she summoned a tight ring of fire to orbit outside the air shell; again, and she tore a ribbon of the snowpack free and melted it into a complementary ring of water. As she swung out of the follow-through of the second ring's creation, she burst into forward motion again, surfing toward her opponent at the crest of a wave of rippling earth that buckled the snow crust atop it and threw it aside, making straight for her opponent, the tip of Space Sword drawing a roostertail of flame in its wake as it sliced through the air. Utena wasn't daunted by -this- development either. Without hesitation, she flipped the Heart of the Rose in her hands and offered its point to Anthy, who - with a rather wicked little smile - leaned forward and kissed it delicately. White fire raced up the black veins in the blade, lighting up the already-glowing Valkyrie runes as if they were burning from within, and suffused the Prince's scarlet aura with streaks of white lightning. With the fiercest grin she'd sported yet, Utena stepped away from the Priestess and raised her sword in a crusader's salute, kissing the crossbar of the hilt. As her lips touched the metal, a brilliantly glowing sigil appeared on her unmarked forehead, as if illuminated from within like the runes on her sword: a circle, roughly the size of an old Earth Kingdom yuan, crossed with a jaggedly bent line that called to mind a lightning bolt. It was visible for only an instant, there and gone in the blink of an eye, but Anthy saw it, and so, too, did Corwin, whose own AEsir brand flickered as if in sympathy as his eyes went wide with surprise. And they stayed that way, for Utena - her auras of scarlet and white blending into a single brilliant rose with a crack like a sonic boom - met Korra's full-on charge with one of her own, crossing the dwindling space between them with one of the great hunting-cat leaps that had become her signature in the waning days of the Lost Tournament. The Heart of the Rose, like a splinter of the aurora in its Prince's hand, met the flame-sheathed blade of Sokka's Meteor Sword with a lightning-like flash that dazzled the eyes of the onlookers. Utena's rose-pink corona and Korra's elemental shells blended into a confusion of light, color, and shape as the two silhouetted figures at their centers met, merged, and parted again, traveling in opposite directions. Utena landed near the center of the arena, down on one knee, the light receding from the streaks and runes of her sword as the glow of her aura faded. Korra came to rest not far from where Utena had started, the ground around her blasted down to bare rock by the tremendous forces unleashed, Space Sword's blade visibly steaming in the cold night air. Both women's shoulders rose and fell sharply as they caught their breath, not moving, not speaking. -No one- spoke. For a full five seconds, there wasn't a sound. Then, slowly, they rose to their feet and turned to face one another. On the ground midway between them, the pale blue rose that had been on Korra's chest lay scattered like a bomb burst, its denuded central bud smoldering gently. Utena's was still right where Anthy had pinned it. The onlookers remained quiet, trying to take in what that meant, as Korra silently handed Space Sword back to Karana for her to put away in its sheath, then walked slowly across the battered battlefield toward Utena. A few paces away, she stopped, composed herself, and with perfect gravity made the waterbender salute, bowing deeply to the victorious Duelist. Utena, for her part, raised the Heart of the Rose in a crusader salute once more; when she snapped it down and away at the completion of that gesture, it glowed brightly, then dissolved into a spray of silvery sparks that rose upward and dissipated into the night, leaving her hand empty. Another long, silent moment passed... ... and then the two women came together in a fierce, broadly grinning embrace, tears of unrestrained and largely uncategorized emotion welling in their eyes, and the onlookers at last burst into cheers. To be sure, their hometown heroine had been vanquished before their eyes, and that was a bit of a shock, but it was done with such verve - and Korra was taking it with such grace - that the admiration they showed was genuine and unstinting. After the duel, dinner, Falling Dark style: Korra and her friends ate arctic hen with hot sauce and some kind of fried tubers out of paper cones with disposable chopsticks, standing up, in a little group not far from the stand that had provided the food. "Now this is civilized," Utena remarked with a smile. "Everybody having a good time?" Korra inquired, drawing a round of are-you-kidding laughs. "Hey, it's only polite to check." "Does anyone come here and -not- have a good time?" Anne wondered, looking around at the town square. The hour was growing late, and at this time of year it had been dark since early afternoon anyway, but the festival showed no sign of slowing down. A couple of youngsters had used a waterbending trick to Zamboni the middle of the square, where the sparring arena had been, and were now out there ice skating. All around the perimeter, people still stood around in little groups, much like they were, eating, drinking, talking, laughing. Karana, noticing something about the skating youths, laughed and elbowed Azana; the firebender looked, then smiled. Out on the sheet of ice, Kuvi seemed to have taken it upon himself to teach Nyima how to ice skate. Both Fire Ferrets knew that the young Air Nomad was probably a better skater than -he- was, because of her natural grace and because it was an activity Katara had introduced to Air Temple Island in the winters many years before; but she was playing along, pretending to go uncertainly, so as to permit him his attempt at gallantry. "What?" Anthy wondered, seeing the two of them smiling; then she turned and looked as well. "Ahhh." She, in turn, nudged Corwin. He looked up from projecting for Kaitlyn a general-arrangement diagram of the house he and Korra were designing, then grinned and called -her- attention to the pair, and so forth. "Aw, that's sweet," said Maki. For a few moments they all stood, eating in silence, and watched the little scene unfolding; then a voice nearer to hand called them from the reverie, saying, "Er, excuse me, Avatar Korra?" Korra turned, a questioning look on her face, to see a young Water Tribesman she didn't recognize standing nearby. He had the undefinable air of a city boy about him - something about the cut of his parka, maybe, or his slightly-fancier-than-usual hairstyle - and he was carrying a large camera. With her eyes on him, he hesitated, almost making a break for it, but then bucked himself up and said, "Uh... my name's Kapi, I'm with the Nanisivik News. Do you mind, uh, can I get a photo of you and your new team?" "What is it with us and reporters lately?" Korra wondered with a wry little grin. "Some folks got it," Corwin remarked. Next to him, Minami nodded sagely. "True," Korra agreed. "What do you guys think?" Shrugs and nods all around. She turned back to the young newsman and said, "Sure, but do you think your deadline'll survive if we finish eating first?" Kapi blushed a bit. "Oh! Uh, of course. That is, however you want to arrange... I mean... " Korra laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Relax, kid. It's not a problem." She held up her paper cone. "Have you tried the arctic hen? You really should." They posed for a half-dozen shots, just in case, and then sent the relieved young stringer on his way with a cone of hen-and-spuds of his own. Korra watched him go, his antennae already alert for other photo opportunities, and chuckled. "They get younger all the time," she said, and then, out of nowhere, yawned apocalyptically. "Whoo. That's my cue, I think," she said with a nod. "You guys can stick around if you want - if it's anything like previous years, this party's gonna go all night - but I think I'll call it a day." Grinning, she nudged Utena with an elbow and added, "You were pretty rough on the old lady." Utena snorted with cheerful scorn. "Old lady indeed," she said, rolling her eyes. In the end, they all agreed it was just about bedtime; and so, with thanks and hugs for Nanuruq, Kejna, and a number of the other local worthies, the whole group excused themselves and slipped away to Korra's house. Azana, Karana, Maki, and the Satos intended to leave them at the door and retire to their own sleeping quarters (either at Karana's parents' house or the bunkhouse out back), but before they could do so, Utena asked them to step in for a moment. Intrigued, they did so. Korra's little living room was a tad crowded with this many people in it (to say nothing of Niri and Serge), but not too badly, and there was an air of expectancy as they all gathered and waited for the pink-haired Duelist's explanation. "Did you bring it?" Utena asked Kaitlyn. "Of course," Kate replied. With a gentle smile, she removed a small object from an inside pocket and gave it to Utena without revealing it to everyone else. Utena grinned at her, then sobered, turned to Korra and said solemnly, "Yesterday, you welcomed the three of us - " (gesturing to Anthy and Corwin) " - into your tribe and your family. Tonight... " Pausing, she raised her left hand, holding it in a fist against her chest for a moment; then, with a smile, she said, "Tonight it's our turn," extended the hand to Korra, and opened it. On her palm, a silver ring inlaid with the Duelist rose crest glinted in the firelight - much like Korra's eyes, as they widened in surprise. The Avatar slowly reached out and took the ring from Utena's palm. Holding it between her right thumb and forefinger, she stood looking at it for a few seconds, her face almost blank. Presently she slid it onto the third finger of her left hand with an almost reverent deliberation, before holding out her hand to regard it for a moment more. Her eyes misting over once again, she embraced Utena. Anthy (and Annabelle) joined in a moment later, then Corwin, then Kate; then, after some tearfully grinning gestures from somewhere inside the pile, all the rest as well. Korra couldn't remember the last time there had been an all- hands Team Avatar group hug; she only knew it had been -too- damn long. THURSDAY, APRIL 15 In the morning, Kaitlyn and Anne were the first to leave, returning to New Avalon the same way they'd come shortly after Corwin rose for the day. For a moment, it looked like they might have to leave without Sergei, but he did eventually relent, parting from Niri with a great grumbling sigh. The polar bear dog looked a bit downcast, but took it better than she had last time; there was, at least, no mournful howling on this occasion. Perhaps she had more confidence that she'd see the tiger again this time, since he'd already reappeared once. "By the time you guys get back here," Utena remarked as Corwin prepared Korra's front window for their departure, "we should have the house at least partway up." "The general arrangement prints don't really give you a feel for what it's going to look like -on the site,-" Korra added, "but I think it's really shaping up to be something special." "I can't wait to see it in person," Kate said, then added mischievously, "Juni-chan, on the other hand, is looking forward to other things." "SENseiiii," said Anne, reddening, while Karana giggled and Azana very tactfully did not. Instead, she smiled and said, "We're looking forward to having you with us, too. Perhaps if Master Kaitlyn agrees, you can come on the road with us for a while." "We've got a two-week road trip in June," Karana added, nodding agreement. "Big loop of the Earth Kingdom, mostly. Gaipan, Omashu, Gaoling, Night Vale, three games in BSS, then up to Toolsville and Frostbite Point before heading home. Should be good times except for the last part," she added with a wink. Hugs all around, and ladies and tiger were gone, dispatched back to a place where it was (rather startlingly) a balmy spring day. When Corwin returned a few moments later, those who were left squared away their own things, put on their winter gear, and headed out to see what might be going on. The Senna common was clean and empty, all the little booths and things knocked down in the early hours and packed away until they would be needed again. Even the ashes and soot from the bonfire were gone. The only trace of the previous night's festivities that remained in daylight was Karana's gleaming ice sculpture at the far end, which would be there until the spring thaw claimed it in October or November. In the middle of the common, Nyima was preflighting Vayu, checking that his saddle was properly affixed and that all was otherwise well with him. He'd spent the night outside, there being no building in Senna large enough to accommodate him, but it would take more than one (relatively mild) antarctic evening to trouble a sky bison, and the locals had been very generous with the fruit and whatnot; he had no complaints. She had just reached the conclusion that all was in order when she noticed that someone was standing a few yards away, watching her. At first she assumed it was Kuvi, come to see her off, a thought she found curiously pleasing; he was a very polite and rather handsome young man, and she'd enjoyed the time they'd spent together during the festival, however awkward it had been (and it had been -mightily- awkward, particularly at first). When she completed her work and looked up, though, she saw to her surprise that it was Lhakpa. If anything, her sister looked - and made her feel - more awkward than Karana's cousin would have. Nyima's first instinct was to go on ignoring Lhakpa, as she'd been doing steadily for the last few weeks. It seemed to be working, after all, and why second-guess success? That strategy, however, was predicated on Lhakpa, in turn, ignoring her, and right now she wasn't keeping up her end. She was very plainly -noticing- her younger sister. It ruined the effect. In order to ignore her now, Nyima would have to come right out and -snub- her, and that felt wrong somehow. Instead, with a nonchalance that was largely feigned, she asked, "Yes?" Lhakpa opened her mouth, closed it again, and sighed. "Look, Nyima," she said. "I know you're mad at me... " Nyima shook her head. "No," she said. "I'm not mad at you." "Is that so? Then I guess I must just have -imagined- that you haven't even acknowledged my presence in weeks." "I never said I wasn't -avoiding- you," said Nyima. "Why would you do that if you're not angry?" Lhakpa countered. "Something Korra told me one of her old friends once said, long before we were born," Nyima replied coolly. "'Even the dumbest animal eventually learns to stay away from fire,' or words to that effect." Lhakpa scowled and looked as if she might retort, but then her face fell and she sighed again, shoulders sagging. "I guess I earned that," she said. "Look... I'm... I'm sorry about the Corwin thing," she blurted. "It was... it was too far. It was none of my business. I saw you standing in the doorway looking at him and I just... -did- it." She looked at her hands, as if not quite certain what she should do with them, and repeated just above a mumble, "I'm sorry." Nyima regarded her sister for a few seconds, her expression hard to read. When she spoke again, what she said was so unexpected it made Lhakpa look up in surprise: "Are you OK?" Lhakpa blinked at her. "Am -I-... " For a second she thought Nyima was being sarcastic - implying that Lhakpa must be feeling ill if she were actually apologizing for something - but the look of unfiltered concern on the younger Air Nomad's face would have put the lie to that even if Lhakpa -hadn't- realized a moment after thinking it how utterly out of character for Nyima that would be. That's something -I- would do, she thought with another little pang of shame. "... I'm not sure," she admitted after a moment. "I'm... I have a lot of things on my mind lately. That's no excuse for what I did," she added, lest Nyima think she was trying to walk back her apology, "but it's the truth. I don't... " She shook her head. "I don't know if I'm OK." "Well," said Nyima a trifle awkwardly, "if there's anything I can do to help you... " Lhakpa managed a wan smile. "Thanks, but... I'm sort of... working on it with Nall." She would've made something snide out of -that,- too, probably involving the phrase "I'll bet you are," but Nyima only nodded, her face serious. "OK," she said. "Just let me know if you want to talk. I'll be around." Lhakpa just stood looking at her for a few seconds, unable to come up with anything to say, but Nyima didn't seem to expect anything. She just turned and went to say goodbye to the others, who were coming across the common by then. Nall joined them partway there, going to stand next to Lhakpa, while the rest gathered to see Nyima off. "Hey, Nyima, I've got a message for you," said Karana cheerfully. "Kuvi had to leave at first light to help his grandma get home to Qurluqtuq, but he wanted me to let you know, and I quote," (and here she screwed up her face into a reasonably good imitation of her teenage cousin's slightly befuddled, slightly frightened look and pitched her voice lower) "'Ummm, uhhhhh, I, ummm, it was, uhhh, it was great meeting her, uhhhh, and, umm, I, uhh, I hope I, ummm, see her again, ummm, sometime,' end quote." "Handsome -and- articulate," Maki observed with a mischievous smile. "Better not let -that- one get away." Nyima smiled, blushing slightly, and gently chided the Kyoshi Warrior for her uncharitability, before telling Karana, "Well, if you're in touch with him again before I am, please tell him I had a good time. Perhaps I'll see him again when next I'm in the area." "You want his address?" Karana asked, then grinned and added, "No point in giving you his phone number unless you like paying 35 fen a minute for silence." Had she been feeling a little more like herself, Lhakpa would probably have had something playful-but-biting to say about Detachment at that juncture, but her heart wasn't in it today, and she let it go by as Nyima said she would like that, thank you, and tucked the note Karana gave her away in her robes. "Will you beat us back to Air Temple Island?" Korra asked her as she climbed up to her perch on Vayu's neck. "I'm not sure," Nyima replied. "It depends on how long it takes me to finish my business at the Southern Air Temple. I probably will; at worst I'll only be a day or two behind you." "Well, we'll see you there," said Utena. "Don't stay away too long." "I won't," Nyima promised. "Safe travels, everyone; I'll see you soon. Oh - Lhakpa?" Lhakpa looked up from a quiet consultation with Nall, surprised. "Yes?" "If you two have time," said Nyima, "you should stop by the Southern Air Temple yourselves on the way home. That way you won't actually have to -lie- to Great-Grandmother when she asks you about your visit." Once again, coming from anyone else, that remark would have had an archly cutting edge; but once again, it was offered as plain and simple advice, without any perceptible subtext at all. "I... " Lhakpa glanced at Nall, who nodded with a faint half-smile, then turned back to her sister and gave her an airbender salute and a short bow. "Thank you, Master Nyima," she said, and the younger Air Nomad realized it was the first time her elder sister had ever called her that sincerely. Nyima smiled and returned the salute. "See you there," she said, and then, "Vayu - yip yip!" Lhakpa stood and watched her sister's sky bison dwindle toward the northern horizon, a look of mixed confusion and something like awe on her face. Then, when Nyima and Vayu were out of sight, she shook herself slightly, turned to Nall, and asked in a tone more like her old self, "Think we can beat her there?" Nall chuckled. "You just watch me work," he replied. Then, a bit awkwardly, he turned to the others and said,"So hey, uh... we'll see you guys in a while, yeah?" "You know where to find us," said Corwin, a trifle glumly. "Yeah. Well... " Nall ruffled his own hair, a gesture similar to the back-of-the-head one both Corwin and Utena often did at moments like this, then said, "Might not be long now. I hope. We'll see." He hesitated, as if there were more he wanted to say, but then he just shrugged and said, "Later," before suddenly and dramatically assuming his full dragon form. Lhakpa sprang nimbly onto his back at the base of his long neck, her hands digging into his shaggy white fur for support, and with one great wingbeat that sent up a swirling cloud of snow, he launched himself into the sky and sped off as if in pursuit of Vayu. "That guy is -weird,-" Garnet interjected into the slightly puzzled silence left behind. "Seriously, is he having a midlife crisis or something?" "Maybe something like that," Corwin mused. "Welp, I guess it's about time for us to hit the trail too," said Korra. "Places for people to be and all that." "Yeah, 'Zana and I have to meet Wan in Jinbao by noon tomorrow," said Karana. "Plenty of time," said Ryo. "That's the big advantage of flying Sato Air," he added with a grin. "You never have to worry about the plane leaving without you." The rest of them got back to Nanisivik in their two boats an hour or so after nightfall. That was not particularly late at night this time of year, so they had plenty of time to enjoy another leisurely dinner in town. This time they went to the Harborside, a fairly fancy seafood place (naturally) on the waterfront, where their table by one of the grand windows had an excellent view of the Mirai at her mooring. "Are you guys headed out tonight, or are you going to wait 'til morning?" Maki asked Ryo and the Fire Ferrets as they all awaited their entrees. "Do I get a vote?" Garnet wondered. "Well, I do need night hours," Karana mused; then she yawned faintly into the back of one hand and added wryly, "But I need sleep more." "The 265 can get you to Jinbao in a little under four hours," Minami pointed out. "So long as you're wheels-up by half-past seven or so, you should be fine." Ryo nodded. "That's what I was thinking." Anthy gave Karana a curious look across the table, but her question was forestalled temporarily by the arrival of a small squad of kitchen runners with their meals. Only when operations were completed and the staff had departed was she able to ask, "Are you a pilot, Karana?" Karana nodded. "Sure am. Got my instrument rating; multi- engine too. I'm working on my commercial certificate now. That's what I need the hours for - you have to log a lot of flying hours to qualify for one of those. I don't have a ton of spare time, so it's gonna take me a while, but... " She shrugged. "I keep plugging." She indicated Ryo and Minami with her chopsticks and went on, "These guys have been helping me out a lot, letting me use one of their airplanes whenever I have a little time." "It's our pleasure, believe me," Minami told her with a smile. "Future Industries may not sponsor the Fire Ferrets any more, but Ryo and I still believe in supporting young talent whenever we can." "That line would be more convincing if she wasn't older than you," Korra pointed out dryly. "Only a month!" Minami mock-objected; then she grinned and added, "Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it." Most of the group hadn't fully recovered from the festival yet, and between the very early nightfall and the onset of food coma, few were up for anything more than heading back to the Mirai after dinner to get some more sleep. Karana crashed particularly hard; she hit the wall midway through dinner (the wine probably didn't help) and had to be slung over Niri's back like a casualty for the return to the ship. With voices hushed and manners softened as though in a hotel corridor, those who were still conscious enough to do so said their goodnights in the passage outside the Mirai's guest quarters. "Do you need a hand, Azana?" Maki wondered quietly as the firebender unslung her semi-comatose partner from the polar bear dog's back, but Azana only chuckled. "Trust me," she said, "we've made it home in much worse shape than this." Setting Karana carefully on her feet, she added wryly, "At least tonight, -one- of us is sober." "I'm not drunk, I'm just sleepy," Karana mumbled in protest. "G'night, you guys." "See you in the morning," said Minami as the two Fire Ferrets disappeared into their stateroom. Then she yawned herself and looked at her watch, eyebrows rising with surprise. "Goodness, it's only 7:30. It feels much later." "It's been a busy couple of days," Ryo pointed out. "True. Well, I guess I don't need to notify the galley to delay breakfast," Minami said with a smile. "Good night, everyone." There were hugs and sentimental expressions; then, tired and content, they went their (rather short) separate ways. Snugly moored in a quiet corner of Nanisivik Harbor, well away from the freight terminal with its lights and cranes, the Mirai slept. /* Joe Satriani "Flying in a Blue Dream" _Flying in a Blue Dream_ (1989) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Magnetic Terrapin Studios presented Undocumented Features Future Imperfect THE LEGACY OF KORRA / THE ORDER OF THE ROSE Suite for Avatar and Trinity (The Diqiu Suite) Fourth Movement: Familiar Spirits The Cast (in order of appearance) Corwin Ravenhair Korra Skuld Ravenhair Benjamin Hutchins Tezuo Nishimura Anthy Tenjou Utena Tenjou Annabelle Tenjou Garnet Ryo Sato Jinora Sita Nall Silverclaw Minami Sato Hitomi Hattori Kuo Renli Ikki Nyima Meelo Pabu XVII Tenzin Gyatso Lhakpa Niri Xiaobai Zhi Harbin Yumi Makoto Maki Karana Azana Kejna Nanuruq Nanuq Kaitlyn Hutchins Anne Cross Sergei Vayu Kazana Kuviuutuq Kapi and featuring the Acolytes of Air Temple Island SCM/RTT Technical Installation Team 1 the Major League Bending fans of Republic City and the people of Senna and its environs written by Benjamin D. Hutchins with Philip Jeremy Moyer and child care specialist Anne Cross with thanks to The Eyrie Productions Usual Suspects and All the Sources Well... -mostly- slept. Korra, still feeling oddly energized from the previous day, didn't head straight for bed. She suspected (incorrectly) that she was the only person on the ship who was still awake as she went through her customary evening winding-down exercises out on the darkened flight deck. She was working out silently tonight, timing the well-worn exercises in her head instead, but a minute or so after she started, she was slightly surprised to hear music start playing quietly somewhere nearby. /* Glenn Miller and his Orchestra "Moonlight Serenade" Bluebird B-10214-B (1939) */ She turned to see Corwin leaning casually against the wall next to the hatch leading back into the ship, left hand in his trouser pocket, the orange lines of his omni-tool's minimal-mode interface glowing around his right. There wasn't enough light out here to see his face clearly at that distance, but based on his body language, she figured he had to be smiling. She smiled back, then returned to her forms, completing her daily cooldown as a couple more mellow big-band numbers played. When she'd finished - timed exactly to the end of "Stardust" - she favored him with a curious look as she approached the hatchway and said in a low voice, "I figured you'd have crashed with the others. You've got a pretty busy day tomorrow." Corwin shut off his omni-tool and followed her inside, shaking his head. "Not quite yet. There's something I have to do first." He shut the hatch behind them, then turned to her with a smile and said, "We've all been so busy, I haven't given you your birthday present yet." Korra raised an eyebrow. "After everything that's happened over the last couple-three days, do you really think you have to give me anything more?" she asked him. "No, but I want to," said Corwin, then pointed out, "That's sort of the point of gifts." Korra chuckled and bumped his shoulder. "Fair point," she said. Corwin led the way to the solarium, but rather than cross to the darkened "field office", he went instead to the futon, climbing up near the foot and sitting crosslegged facing the headboard. Once settled, he gestured for her to join him. With a curious, intrigued look, she did so, folding her legs under her and arranging herself so that she was facing him, about an arm's length away. "Remember when you took me to the Spirit World for the first time?" Corwin asked. "Well, now it's my turn. I've got a little surprise lined up for you there." Korra's look of curiosity increased, but Corwin had already shut his eyes and started the slow, meditative breathing that Korra herself had taught him, many years before. She regarded him with a smile that was equal parts nostalgic and wistful for a couple of seconds, then closed her own eyes and sank into herself. When she opened her eyes again a few moments later, they were sitting in a snowdrift under a blazing aurora, many times brighter than could be seen in the physical world, even near the Spirit Portals. The sensation brought on a surge of deja vu, so powerful she was vaguely surprised to see that Corwin was still a young adult and not the boy he'd been nine years before. Grinning as if he'd known she'd thought it, he rose to his feet, took her hand, and pulled her upright as well, then said, "This way," and led her toward the domed shape of a Southern Water Tribe iglu that stood a few yards away. In the air above and around them, spirits flitted here and there on various errands, paying the two projected humans little mind. One, a bee spirit the size of a football, paused briefly on the way past to nod casual acknowledgment to Korra, who waved in reply. Korra entered the iglu right behind Corwin, expecting to find whatever it was he wanted her to see within, only to discover that it didn't have an inside. Instead, when they crossed the threshold, they came -out- of -another- door, into a place much brighter and warmer than the one they'd left. Korra made a wordless sound of surprise, shielding her eyes from the dazzling sunshine, then turned to see that they'd just emerged not from an ice-block iglu, but rather a ramshackle little wooden hut. What was more, their winter clothes had gone, replaced by bathing suits and light shirts, and the soft white substance under Korra's now-bare feet wasn't snow... it was sand. /* Nobuo Uematsu "To Zanarkand" _Distant Worlds II: More Music from Final Fantasy_ (2010) */ She turned through another 180 degrees, returning to her original heading, and looked around her with a growing smile as her new surroundings sank in. They were still in the Spirit World, of course; that much was obvious from the sky, a beautiful shade of slightly purplish blue not found in material reality, and the vivid turquoise sea lapping gently at the pure white sand of the beach where they stood. This lay in a long, gently curving half-moon bay, surrounded by tall white cliffs topped with what looked like pine forests at this distance. Before them, the sea rolled endlessly off to a misty horizon, the kind of vista that brought to mind literal thoughts of the (physical, not eschatological) end of the world. Korra turned to Corwin, her smile of wonder becoming a grin, and said, "That was a nice transition. You've been practicing." With a thoughtful look, she added, "Which is odd, since you haven't been anywhere near Diqiu for six years." Corwin smiled and replied, "Some skills are portable." Then he leaned and kissed her cheek. "Happy birthday, Korra." She hugged him, returning the kiss with murmured thanks, then released him and turned once more to regard the scene. There was a Water Tribe-style canoe, oddly incongruous in this tropical setting, pulled up on the beach a dozen yards farther down, and not far from that stood a cabana of sorts: a wooden canopy held up by a couple of poles. In the shade under this stood two lounge chairs facing out to sea with a small table between them. Korra turned to make a wry remark about the need for some umbrella drinks to complete the scene - - to find that Corwin had gone, and the door to the beach hut was just swinging shut. "... Corwin?" she wondered, puzzled. She was about to go over, open the door again, and request an explanation for this curious behavior. Before she could do so, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, swung back, and saw that one of the lounges was occupied. The figure lying there had raised a hand in greeting, and Korra looked more closely... ... and more closely still... ... and then broke into a run across the sand, tears of joy springing to her eyes. Arriving at the lounge, she fell to her knees beside it and threw her arms around the person sitting there, who leaned forward to meet her. "Hello, Korra," said Katara fondly, her own eyes none too dry, as she hugged the Avatar tight. "Oh, it's good to see you." special guest star Katara of the Southern Water Tribe The Diqiu Suite will conclude with Fifth Movement: Taken by Storm E P U (colour) 2014