༉˚*ೃ ᵒ¹. 𝐀 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄!

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐒 a little girl, she had been taught that fighting was like leaves from the vine, a kind of dance between the two warriors and their chi, and sometimes, waiting for the moment to strike was like the spinning of the four seasons out ahead of her—from the hot fire of summer, to the deadly cold of winter. Like the flip of the coin, whatever moment she chose could be the difference between victory and defeat. It had been a good lesson, and one that she carried with her every step, like a small reminder sewed inside her ribs, against her heart. These fragments of time were made up of fragile tiny shells, drifting in the foam all away from her, and she could either seize them, or crush them beneath her feet. She had gotten good at waiting—so good at it in fact—that as she ducked through the dry weeds with her body bent close to the dust-ridden earth, the itching desire to leap to action could not consume her even greater desire to be a shock. Nothing could beat the surprise on their faces.

          And then, well, Luli was so busy in tracking the group of soldiers through the dense forest, all the way from the previous town—there were always soldiers like them, in every village, in every corner of the world—with their Fire Nation insignia uniforms and looted goods, that she misplaced her step and landed rather loudly on a twig splayed out in front of her. An honest mistake—but one that Luli would be embarrassed about later. She should have learned her lesson last time, when it left her with a busted nose and a nasty wound at her side. The sixteen-year-old instantly went stiff, freezing up, though she was safely behind the cover of dry bushes.

          Luli thought it might go unnoticed, for just half a hopeful second, when one of the soldiers bringing up the rear disturbed their boisterous laughter—Luli couldn't imagine it was about anything good, it never was—paused, held up a single hand, and looked in her direction. The young girl ducked even deeper behind the undergrowth, practically pressed to the dirt with her chest, so she couldn't even see their happenings. Premedititatedly, her fingers curled into fists. "Hold on," said the Fire Nation soldier, and Luli swallowed her breath. "I heard something in the woods." Surely, the idea of the oh-so-powerful, oh-so-invincible Fire Nation soldiers being tracked was unnerving. Luli could only hope.

          One of his companions, still wrapped up in whatever mocking joke had been told moments before, must have clapped him on the shoulder. "You're imagining things again, Liqin, the area is clear." The soldier said it with such fervour that it brought a scheming smile to Luli's face, fingers absentmindedly coming up to rest against the single-scale necklace at her throat. But it was clear that the young girl wasn't yet off the hook, when she heard the footsteps of the soldier grow closer.

           "No—someone's out there." His voice was suspicious and self-assured, and it was all Luli could do to crouch as he approached her hiding spot, until only the dry bush was a wall between them. All it would take was him to peek forward, and— Luli had to make a choice.

          The Fire Nation soldier bent down, and Luli leapt up straight on her feet. There it was—across his face, that flash of complete surprise—as Luli gripped his arm, hauled it across both of her shoulders, and twisted her body around masterfully. "Hey!" she chirped cheerfully, a wide grin spread across her face, and flung the soldier across the ground, throwing herself up and through the bushes. She was a strong girl, but lithe, and most of her combat relied on surprise and using her opponents' strength against them. That, and speed. And, well—.

          She spun, landed solidly on the ground with her feet—both her mother and her father would have praised her for that—and threw out her closed fist towards the rest of the soldiers, who'd been caught entirely off guard. Fire punched from her knuckles, orange and blazing: lit up the area around them in a warm glow, before half of the soldiers had even processed what was happening, and shot towards them. She'd never been anything near a master, but Luli had learned from the best—and she always recalled her lessons, even if she hadn't had them in a few years. The burst of orange flame struck one of the soldiers right in the chest, deflecting off his metal armour and throwing him back into the tree-line. 

          The scramble, the shout of alarm, "She's—!", and Luli had caught them right in her trap. She was a force to be reckoned with—small and lithe, eyes a shade of obsidian-amber in the changing light, as the bushes around her caught alight, smoke rising in the air. At first glance, she could have been mistaken for a spirit of some kind. The soldiers scattered at her, and Luli was prepared. Her coil of dark braids swung around her head as her fist struck out, flames a hot burst into the air like the stream of a comet. The shield that the Fire Nation soldier threw up was desperate—Luli's was calculated. Leaves from the vine, always. And it was fearsome. For the second leap that carried her body off the ground shot a pyre of flames as strong and unyielding as a fist, and struck it did. It annihilated the defensive fiery wall and sent him flinging back, thrown against the ground.

          Surprise, surprise, it was always her best element. If they'd imagined a trained assassin to be crouched in the woods, rather than a young, teenage girl, they'd been foolishly wrong. Fire launched at her from the left, and Luli was quick to deflect it with her own set of orange flames. It reflected in the amber-black of her eyes.

          Here's the thing about Fire Nation firebenders. They're not used to fighting their own kind. Sure, they grow up sparring with one another, Agni Kais exist and soldier training involves brutal regimens and battles against flame—but once they get fit in their armour, and are put out in the world as soldiers and commanders to be feared, they never again face another bender whose element is fire. They know they have all the power, when they stand over earthbenders and waterbenders and nonbenders alike, when they scar and burn civilians, and turn towns to ash—because fire is one of destruction, and they have learned to use it to terrify. Few fight back, and when they do, flame is quickly shown to be the superior element in the many.

          And by the time Luli crosses them? Well, the art of duelling other firebenders and little girls who fight back is long gone. They've become cowards under the guise of power. And she? Luli had been fighting firebenders from the moment she'd been placed on the sparring matts as a child, and had never quite stopped.

          Luli serpentined to the side, dodging the next gust of hot flame and flinging herself back fluidly to punch her own set of fireballs, one after the other, after the other. Her elegance and poise made the powerful blows of the fire all the more disconcerting. Then—Luli was leaping at him, ready to bring him down, and he was flinging out another column in a heavy fist.

          Luli sunk beneath the coil of flame, but miscalculated the aftermath, and the soldier's elbow connected with the bone of her cheek. Crack. For a moment, the girl reeled back in pain—blinding sharpness exploding up through the side of her face—but regained her composure quickly. She was no foreigner to pain. Luli easily swung around, pivoted on her toes, and crunched her fist into the man's nose. It didn't stop there, she grabbed his face and turned her head behind her just in time to recognise another soldier coming at her, so close that his fists were already swinging towards her.

          Her only spare hand flew out and grasped his wrist, forced it to the side so it missed her head entirely, flames shooting upwards. And then his next hand was reeling towards her head, alight with flame. Luli ducked under the fist—feeling the heat of fire above her hair—and kicked sharply forward. Her foot shattered into the side of her knee, an utterly painful move. A likely break. He howled, and crumpled on that side, and then Luli was left holding two Fire Nation soldiers on either side of her, quickly recovering from their pain. The one who's knee she'd broken looked like he was going for another dazed swing, but Luli was quick and panicked enough to draw her hand around, grab one of the soldiers by the back of the helmet, and smash their foreheads together. It was nowhere enough strength to do permanent damage, but then she flipped one hard against the ground, and kicked the other in the ribs, and it was enough to send them down for good, bodies thumping in the dry dirt.

          And Luli felt the burst of flame before she saw it—the heat rippling towards her right—, was quick to punch out her own in defense. The conflicting fires met and dissipated in the air between them, fanning out into embers. Across from her was a Fire Nation soldier, his fists outstretched and his helmet still on. The last one standing. No longer did Luli have the element surprise. The soldier breathed out for a moment—that brief interlude before the fight began—before springing forward and throwing a great wave of flame. Luli tossed up another blow of fire, again and again. The battle between firebenders was always a smooth kind of rhythm. Flame, flame, deflect, flame, flame, flame, deflect, the soldier was better than she would have guessed. Not perfect against firebending, but decent, which is more than could be said about any of his companions. And he'd had time to recover from the shock. She sent another burst of fire his way, and sprung forward, always light on her toes.

          The soldier sent a heavy wave of flame towards her—razing the dry earth—at which she slid to the side, and made her stance. Luli planted her foot steadily in the earth and dug her hand up from the earth towards the sky, as if she was an earthbender. Flame ruptured out from its path and was deftly spun away. Her flames were sent back towards her. Luli broke into a run. Her feet struck off the ground as she sprinted straight-on for the soldier; for the fire—and Luli jumped, knees drawn up and arms flying up. She broke through the burst of flame, coiling it away from her, with her hands outstretched and a determined kind of smile on her face—brows set inwards and lips just tilting up at both sides ever-so-slightly—and punched both fists forward. Her own flame flew out mid-air, as she soared towards the last soldier, sending him stumbling back before she struck the ground, fell into a roll, and kicked fire from both her feet.

          The soldier successfully drew up flame to deflect the blow, but was still sent reeling back. That was when Luli flung herself up into a crouch, swung around her spare leg to sweep the man off his feet, brought it back beneath her and spun her body up to kick him straight backwards. The result of her feat was the Fire Nation soldier crashing back, spine striking into the tree behind him before he went still. Oh, how she'd wished her teachers had seen that move.

          And then it was all over. There was still ash rising in the air when Luli stood up again, breathing heavily, and slowly relaxed her muscles. The small group of soldiers she'd faced were sprawled out unconscious across the forest floor, in various positions that made them look not nearly so frightening or powerful anymore. Surprise always knew to work in her favour.

          Luli brushed the soot and dirt off her clothes, rubbed the darkening mark on her cheekbone that would result in a nasty bruise, and began looting the things they'd stolen. It didn't feel like so much of a crime, taking from the Fire Nation. It never had.

          She was piled with items and cloth bags when Luli began her walk back through the woods—confident that the soldiers would be out for another ten minutes at least, and that they'd need to patch up before setting out after her again, if—her braided loops all coiled and a spring in her step. The sun, its familiar face, shone down upon her as she passed between the great boroughs of trees, beneath their patching shadows. She was a child of it, after all, like all firebenders. Perhaps it would be sad, at what its gift had become.

          When the borders of the Earth Kingdom village fixed its way into her vision, the girl emerging from the woods looked nothing of the sorts out of place—her uniform green and gold, fire quelled in her veins, and a cheery expression on her face even despite the growing bruises. Considering the fact that she'd just run after a gang of Fire Nation soldiers, she was in surprisingly good shape. The child that peeked outside of the open village gates seemed to think so too—a grin appearing on her little face—as she hopped back and forth on her feet and crowed delightedly, "She's back!", her small hands gripping the gate's wooden panelling.

          Luli approached her with a still slightly-breathless smile and ruffled the little girl's dark hair as she passed through the gates. The child giggled and ran around her legs, soon joined by others, pulling excitedly at her hands. She just smiled sweetly down at them.

          Then, the rest of the village. They tentatively stepped out from houses or streetways, from where they'd been cleaning up rubble or ash, nursing wounds or damaged goods, holding the hands of their children or wounded. Some of them were patched up with the handmade salve Luli had recommended weeks before—a traditional Fire Nation healing ointment that cooled burns and helped the healing process, while limiting the effects of scarring. It was common all throughout her country, for accidents or Agni Kais, sparring slips or brutal military training. It pleased her, at least, that Luli could bring something useful out of the Fire Nation. Even if it was just one thing.

          They looked happy to see her, their faces growing relieved. Some even actually looked... joyed. Luli caught snippets of their murmurs, as they moved out around her, expressions a mixture of awe, caution, and happiness.

          "Wow!"

          "She really did it again."

          "How—?"

          To break the incoming pause, Luli reached into one of the bags and withdrew the first item her fingers brushed—a clay, painted teapot—, held it up in the air, dangling from her index finger, calling lightly, "Did anyone get a teapot stolen!?" That did it: they surged towards her with their smiles, chattering amongst themselves and thanking the girl profusely as they collected their stolen things.

          It must have been a bit of a miracle to witness, a sixteen-year-old girl in green clothes who kept heading out after Fire Nation soldiers following raids, and came back mostly unharmed, with all the stolen goods, and just a few bruises, cuts or burns to show for it. All Luli could thank for that was her firebending. It felt good, to make the terroriser the terrified with their own method. They never saw it coming.

          Luli smiled at the looks on their faces when they took their stolen goods back from her—the thanks and the smiles and the glances of wonder, the happiness—and each time, bit by bit, she felt it repairing little bits in her. Luli's own actions could never pay for what she or the Fire Nation had done, not now, at least, but it did make her feel like she was doing something good. Perhaps she wasn't yet changing the world, but these people got their possessions back, and their burns treated properly. It was enough that she could do, for now.

          She was laying out the stolen items on the ground for their rightful owners to take when a figure popped up behind her, hand catching her arm. Luli glanced to her side to see one of the girls her age—soft-faced and green-eyed, with tanned skin and a speckling of freckles—who she was arguably the closest with out of the village. Luli turned to face the girl with a smile. "Oh, I got you your purse," she offered, holding out the jade-coloured coin purse that she'd found amongst the soldiers' stolen things.

          Mingzhu, the apprentice of the village's armourer, looked delighted, taking the item back and clutching it against her chest. "Why, thank you, Liling," with a genuine, kind smile.

          It was always bittersweet, when they thanked her using a false name that had never been her own. The last thing she could have is someone recognising her from word-of-mouth. Still, Luli smiled, tucked one hand against her own hip and raised a dark brow at the shorter girl. "Of course, Mingzhu. Now, you look out, because I'm sure they'll be coming back at some point. They were kind of grumpy about having their butts kicked." Her grin was wide, teeth flashing. A few stands of hair from her braids had come loose, and Luli swiped them up and away.

          The other girl giggled a little bit. "How do you do it?" wondered Mingzhu with a smile as bright as Agni himself. "Each time they come through and torment and pillage, you teach them a lesson! None of us have ever been that successful in fighting a full force of soldiers." Luli had been staying in the village long enough—a few weeks, at least; her travels were becoming slower and more spread out lately—after nearly three years of travelling the world to no avail, she was starting to get... tired.

          Luli flexed her arm in jest and raised an eyebrow. "Muscles." It was true, in part, they were a fair contributor to her success. Even if it was only a half-truth.

          Mingzhu clapped her hands together excitedly. "I know! Earthbending!" She prodded Luli's bicep playfully, hopping on the balls of her feet. "You take them by surprise, and then chuck some rocks at them, bury them in some ground. Presto! I have my silver back." Mingzhu tucked her purse tightly against her chest like it was a treasured friend, grin wider than ever. She looked hopefully at Luli.

          "What?" Luli drew out the word and waved her hand dismissively. "No way! Trust me, if I could earthbend, I would have used it publicly by now. That's like, the most useful bending." She stood by that. Fire was rarely good for anything other than destruction and anger—a difficult element to control. Even if that hadn't been its original purpose. "I could've fixed Wang Lei's hut in a snap if I was an earthbender. Unfortunately for me, no." She crossed her arms afterwards, a grin appearing on her young features.

          Mingzhu peered suspiciously over her—from the girl's braided hair, to her green Earth Kingdom clothes—before a grin warmed her face. "Oh, alright, keep your secret, then. But I'm taking you to tea, because you saved all my silver, and I'd be in big trouble without this." Quickly, she linked her arm through Luli's and dragged the girl through the dusty streets, past the buildings and home still ashy from the recent Fire Nation raid, grinning all the way. Luli smiled too. She'd have to move on, soon. Her quest for the Avatar may have become more leisurely over the past few months, but it didn't mean she could give up on it altogether. Especially with the centennial anniversary of Sozin's Comet coming so soon. Then again, it was nice having something similar to friends every now and then.

          "You are not taking me to Guozhi's," protested Luli, planting her feet in the dirt as Mingzhu forcibly pulled her along by the bicep, "his tea is so overpriced!" The other girl just snickered along and didn't give up. Luli found herself smiling. Guozhi's Tea Shop was right at the edge of town, where all the trade from the rest of the Southern and Western Earth Kingdom came through. He got all the travellers immediately with his high prices and decent tea, and to be fair, it was a nice place to come to kick up your feet. His shop was the first Luli had visited when she'd arrived in the village—so she supposed he'd conned her out of her coin too.

          "It's a treat," Mingzhu insisted yet again, rolling her green eyes. "You got my money back!"

          Luli wasn't having any of it, "At least let me pay for my own tea." She had no shortage of money—her family had been wealthy, she was good at saving, and the small amount of money she did accept when Luli took out Fire Nation soldiers was enough to get her by. Mmm. And Luli did love tea. She supposed that was just something you got, growing up in the Caldera. She'd never met somebody from the Fire Nation who didn't like tea. Well...

          They were in front of Guozhi's Tea Shop, the humbling appearance delightfully deceiving with its serving window and wooden build, soft green paint of the roof recently re-touched. "Table for two, Mingzhu, Liling?" Guozhi offered, his customer smile wide, hands planted on the counter between them.

          As Luli drew out her own purse—she was not going to let Mingzhu pay for her this time—the new trading carts led by their gemsbok bulls were rolling in through the Western Gate, carrying fruits and trinkets and everything else of the sort. They bustled behind Luli and Mingzhu as the latter tried to convince Guozhi to give them a discount and the best seat in the house as reward for Luli helping get back stolen goods—which he never did, but Mingzhu was a good haggler—and Luli glanced towards them.

          One in particular caught her eye: only because of a young boy stood on the back of one of the trading carts, arms waving in the air in joy. The young boy, face scuffed with dirt from the ride from Chin Village, hopped from his father's cart. He was jumping around with excitement, threw his hands up to the sky, and shouted to the passers-by, "The Avatar's in Kyoshi!" It immediately caught everyone's attention—a village that had wanted the return of the Avatar and removal of the Firelords for so long. There were gasps from all around.

            Luli dropped her entire purse, and gold coins rolled across the dirt. Her hands were still poised in the air. "What?" In a manner of seconds her entire demeanour had changed, eyebrows raised and mouth parted in shock. There was really nothing that could have prepared her to hear that on this warm afternoon, when all she'd been planning on doing was sitting down with a hot cup of jasmine tea and maybe making a friend. Now, she was just kind of frozen in disbelief.

          Mingzhu smiled brightly, "Not your Avatar talk again, Liling—"

          "Sorry, Mingzhu, I mean it," she had turned to Mingzhu with a startlingly serious expression, her eyes wide and her face blanched. Like this was a moment she'd been waiting for her entire life, and now that it was here she just couldn't quite process it. Her fingers still clutched the air where her purse had previously been. A thousand thoughts were running through Luli's head. It's really all come to this. The Avatar's just across the sea. In... Kyoshi. Then it all came rushing back to her, and she ducked down to scramble for her purse, gathering up the copper, silver and gold coins. Her fingers had a shake to them—adrenaline, excitement, nerves. Luli rose to her feet again, looking at Mingzhu desperately. "I really have to go this time."

           Mingzhu's expression fell a little, but she smiled softly. "You're serious, aren't you?"

          The racing of Luli's heart was wild against her chest. She knew she had to go. If she missed the Avatar, she'd never, ever forgive herself. This was her one chance. And if it was true... This would change everything. She looked Mingzhu in the eyes as she nodded, never one to shy away from the problem. Her fingers darted out between them to hold onto the other girl's own. "I'll see you again," promised Luli, though she had absolutely no idea the depth that such an adventure would take her on—no idea at all—, her hands clasped tightly around Mingzhu's. And then she backed away, let her hands fall, towards the gates of the small Southern Earth Kingdom village, "I know it." And then the firebender turned away, all her possessions in the world tucked in her tiny pack, and left the village, for what might be the last time.

༉*ೃ༄

𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄, 𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐈 𝐇𝐀𝐃 gone to the Southern Air Temple. She had hoped to find the Avatar there, in the ruins of the Air Nomads' great land, but instead, all she had found was rubble and dust. It was one of the great conquers of the Fire Nation, they had always been taught, a most great and magnificent achievement. Back then, when she was young and naive and led by the ways of Firelord Ozai's war, she had thought it must have been exciting. A fearsome battle, between the great monks of airbending, and the powerful firebenders of her nation, and that in the end, it was her people who had stood victorious. And now, standing on the steps of the cold, ash-ridden remains of what must have been so beautiful, Luli understood that it had been a massacre.

          She had never felt so small and sorrowful all at once. When she had stared up those ochre steps, turned pale and icy from abandonment, past the cracks and the soot, and up to the vast towers and temples stretched out above her, a symbol of the monks' greatness in peace and humility, she realised, truly realised for the first time, that she was part of a lineage that had committed genocide against a peaceful people. She could not let herself cry, because it felt like the greatest disrespect—who was she, a disgraced daughter from the Fire Nation, to weep for those her history erased? Her tears would be worth nothing here, to the ghosts of the massacre led by her ancestors—all she could do was be better. And find the Avatar.

          But as she walked through the empty halls, and the crumbling towers, and the great temples with stone walls that felt like they were aching—and Luli imagined what airbender children would run through these corridors, with toys and games, and with lemurs and sky bison roaming the sky, laughing—Luli realised that there was nobody left here. There was no Avatar, one-hundred years old and waiting in the ruins of his people, for some right time or reason to crush the Fire Nation's rule over the world. There was no one here at all. She was alone in the ruins of the Fire Nation's making, and what had once been, was no longer.

          Luli had sat on the deep cliffsides at the edge of the Air Temple, after that, for a while, beneath the tall statues of the most esteemed monks. Although they were not for her, Luli would have loved to learn from them, so very long ago. But now their history and teachings were vanished—the library had been razed and burned from every scroll, every painting, every tome, and it was as if they'd been entirely cut out from history. She had been only fourteen. And after she'd sat for a while, alone in the ruins, Luli stood and descended back down the cliffside the way that she'd came, and set off once again. If the Avatar wasn't in the Southern Air Temple, then where in the world was he? She'd heard some say that the Avatar cycle had been broken, that he, whoever he was, had been the last. If that was the case, then there was no hope for the war. The Fire Nation would take control of everything. But Luli wouldn't allow that to happen. She would find the Avatar, she had known as she held the scale necklace her mother had gifted to her when she was so very young, she would. It had become her destiny: forged into her body like iron and steel. She would not let the entire world become a waste land.

          That had led her to where she was now. After the Air Temple, she'd travelled the world: from the Valu River Gates to Rójonu, sailed all the way to Huru Town and even, once, to the South Pole, though she found only ice and snow and no civilisation, and had been forced to turn back at the unfavourable conditions. But now, after almost three years of searching, and a one-hundred-year disappearance, he was alive, in Kyoshi, in her lifetime. And Luli—whether she went by the name Liling or Ai or Jie—was going to find him. She had to.

          Fortune seemed to favour her, as the girl was currently at a momentary pause in her two-and-a-half-year nomadic journey across the world—had been resting in a small village West of Gaoling for several weeks, and was at most a day's ride from Chin, where she could cross the ocean to the Island of Kyoshi. The sixteen-year-old had set out instantly, on an ostrich horse that she could trade for a small sailboat at Chin Village's port, and had only taken a few most important things of possession along with her: her purse; the set of Earth Kingdom uniform she had on her back; two-days' worth of food and water; the scale necklace at her throat; a self-written scroll of all the firebending techniques she'd learned, some of which she still hadn't yet mastered; and a porcelain child's doll stained with soot. Material possessions were hard to carry when you were constantly on the move, and Luli had taken barely anything with her from her... home. If that's what it had been.

          The ostrich horse she mounted skirted the sea, its legs powerful and fast—she'd traded half her coins for it, the damn thing, but she needed the fastest mount the village had available—and Luli could only hope that in her absence, the town she had ridden from in such haste wouldn't face destruction at the hands of the Fire Nation. In Earth Kingdom territory, it was always a factor of risk. Luli still wore her hair in the traditional manner that her mother had, a symbol of her status if you knew where to look, but mostly unrecognised out of her country. And, in her green Earth Kingdom clothes, the only thing that would give her away as anything else was her eyes—that shone a golden, ashy amber in the direct sunlight—, her angular features, and the red scale necklace taut around her throat, though typically concealed beneath the uniform collar, which was clearly not of anything East of the Fire Nation.

          Luli rode for hours throughout the day and forthcoming night, through the old villages that scattered across the landscape, of which there was nothing left. In the little towns clustered across the vast Earth Kingdom, there rarely was. The ground was salted with soot and ash, trees stripped of all their bounty and leaves and left blackened and bent in the scorched ground, like charred skeletons. No wildlife chirped or flittered above—the land remained empty. It had been a harsh reminder, when she'd first left the Fire Nation and found all this ruin, a tough one for a child to process. But that had been years ago. In some clusters, pale ash still spiralled down from the sky, fresh, like black snow.

          This was the Waste Land. There was no designated spot that was the Waste Land, but rather every place the Fire Nation stepped. They left no rock unturned, no weed unseared and no rubble unscathed. Whether lands, or the hopeful lives of children, they raze each and every thing, and left the world empty. Luli had learned that a long time ago, before she'd even been taught the ways of war, or knew how it felt to travel the wider world; learned it from the doorway of her own home.

          Walking in the footsteps of the Fire Nation meant that everything ahead of you was the Waste Land, everything that they left behind. The Air Temple had only been a single example—how many, that Luli had seen on her travels, villages had been burned until only soot and ash, and the great Waste was all that was left? Where no crops would grow or flowers would bloom, and even tears could not wash away the charcoal? A great, painful scar on the fabric of the world.

          Luli was always surrounded by the Waste Land, as she travelled in the path of the violent Fire Nation soldiers. And when it was always ahead and behind, always stretched out each and every way around you, sometimes it was hard to believe there was anything else. Sometimes it was difficult to know which way to turn.

          She followed West, staying above the coast and travelling the path most commonly used by refugees or Fire Nation soldiers (where the trees bled sap and ash instead of leaves). The ostrich horse seemed to like it about as much as she did, but Luli urged it to continue, even as night began to stretch out over them like a heavy, starry blanket. They'd be in Chin soon—and the sooner, the better. Walking the path of the Waste Land was a hopeless one.

          So Luli was glad when the fortified walls of Chin Village swum into view, resting upon the cliff's edge with a certain ironic potency. She was a traveller bound West, and so they let her through their gates without qualm, her hood down to reveal her slim face and black plaited hair, easily passing as any Earth Kingdom teenager. There, she sold the ostrich horse for a small-yet-steady sailboat that was hooked at the small docks beneath the sweeping cliffsides, and a hot meal. Some tea was highly appreciated.

          And while she sat, she thought. Thought about what she was going to say to the Avatar, how she would introduce herself, thought what it would be like meeting someone she'd been waiting for her entire life. Thought about how it might change her. She'd been set on this path young—her mother's gentle hand her only guide—and now, as she sat, with the red scale necklace encircling her tanned throat, Luli knew it was part of her destiny. Her only way to find the honour she'd once lost.

          Afterwards, when the moon was showing her lovely face to the night sky, Luli walked to the edge of Chin Village, the cold air on her skin and the stars glowing down on her figure, her heart beating a furious crescendo in her chest. It was... almost time.

          Luli stood at the cliff where legend said Avatar Kyoshi had murdered Chin the Conqueror, and stared out across the ocean. The wind sent her hair wavering around her, slim (yet still curved with the glow of youth; still just a girl) face determined. Somewhere out there, stretched across the vast, swallowing sea, was Kyoshi Island, and there, the Avatar. Nearly three years of searching since she was only thirteen years old—still a naive child—, and Luli was finally going to meet the Avatar. A century of the world waiting and holding its breath, a hundred years of the Fire Nation turning hope into anguish. And Luli, daughter of a Fire Nation commander and a loving mother, traitor to her country and disgrace to her nation, was going to find him.

          She only wished it would not feel so bittersweet.

༉*ೃ༄

SCREAMING at this story finally being up and me finally being able to share luli and her story with you guys. she's so amazing, i love her! as of this chapter going up i've already written 58,000 words of TWL series so far. there will be four acts (three corresponding with the seasons, a fourth so i can explore an outside-of-canon adventure after the hundred year war) AND a spinoff series for the legend of korra! luli is one of my favourite character i've written in AGES and this story is such a comfort of mine. long chapter up first, but the rest will be shorter! i hope you enjoy TWL as much as i do!

luli is a character who just can't sit by and watch injustices happen — particularly those done by the fire nation — and i love her for it. like she sees people using fear to control and is like "alright eat my fist" while also simultaneously being the absolute sweetest baby ever,, i love her !!

don't comment on my use of commas in my writing, they're my comfort punctuation and i will overuse them all i want :')  /lh /j

next chapter will be a lot of fun ;)

word count: 6,195

21.09.2020.