This is a direct continuation of another oneshot I wrote recently, There She Stands. You should probably read that first, but I think that this might still work without reading it. I hope you enjoy it.

I own nothing.

The mountains were the first thing she saw, great spires of stone rising out of the mist. Kanna had been out on open water for a few days now, riding a swift current, anchoring her skin boat around rocks rising out of the sea during the short summer nights to keep from drifting. She had foraged as best she could while still wandering the arctic wilderness, but what food Kanna had managed to find and ration was nearly gone. She needed to head inland.

When she had left home, Kanna had taken all of her maps with her. If her… If anyone set out trying to find her, Kanna knew that just taking one or two of her maps would raise suspicions as to where she had gone and give her… those looking for her a better idea of where she was going. Hoping to counter that, Kanna had taken all of her maps with her. The furthest south any of them depicted was the northern coast of the Earth Kingdom, and important landmarks and trading posts. She knew where she was.

I don't think anyone would think to come looking for me here. Not my family, not Pakku…

Don't think about that. Don't think about the past. Don't think about home. I'm not going back there. I can never go back there again. All I can do now is look towards the future.

Kanna made land by the mouth of a small stream feeding into the ocean. The boat was not heavy, or at least it didn't seem heavy to her, as she pulled it up out of the water and hid it in the brush. She wasn't planning on taking to the sea again (I'll need to buy more maps when I find a town), and neither did she want anyone to spot the boat and know that she was here. As she hid the boat, Kanna began to sweat in her parka; she was further south than she had ever been in her life, and wasn't used to such warmth, even approaching the summer solstice. She pulled off her parka, slinging it over one shoulder. Kanna gathered her bag in her arms, and started to walk inland.

She soon found a narrow trail, overgrown with choking weeds and small trees, but Kanna could still see the stones, arranged neatly one after the other. What could it be, but a trail? It would take her to shelter, Kanna hoped, so she followed it.

The path wound here and about, as undulating and unpredictable as an ocean current. It took Kanna higher and higher into the mountains. As she walked, her head grew light and it became increasingly difficult to breathe. Kanna stumbled on the narrow trail. She let out a strangled cry as she looked to her left and saw the ground beyond the trail drop away in a steep cliff, with a drop so sheer and so far that the stream seemed like nothing more than a strand of blue thread. There was no way she'd survive if she fell. But turning back was the same as giving up, so Kanna kept on.

By the time the path grew wider and the terrain less treacherous, the shadows were long and dark, the sky turning crimson and deep, vivid gold. Kanna had been walking all day without rest; there was nowhere to rest on that constricted, winding trail. Her step was tottering, her pace flagging. When suddenly she came on a great expanse of open, solid ground, she was relieved. Kanna wouldn't have liked to have kept on going through the night, when she couldn't see where she was going, and frankly fancied the thought of sleeping on that trail even less. What if she rolled over while she slept? Well, at least I wouldn't have felt anything when I died—unless I woke up halfway down.

The mountains indeed gave away, and Kanna had solid ground on which to put her feet again, in every direction she could think of or want to walk. She looked west, and in the dusk, she saw it.

Spires, not of mountain but of carven stone, rising up towards the roof of the sky. Kanna looked and saw the silent, empty buildings, long-abandoned, long-unoccupied. The wind whistled and sighed, between towers and through halls, calling for those who would never hear it again.

Kanna stood, and looked on this sight, the beating of her heart growing nearly still. Like a place from myth and legend, the Northern Air Temple stood empty and silent in the dusk, and the wind beckoned her on towards it.

-0-0-0-

Kanna had fallen asleep nearly immediately upon reaching the Northern Air Temple. She had been on her feet all day without rest. That exhausted, Kanna had no desire to explore, and the need to sleep easily overrode any hunger she might have felt. The night was clear, and as warm as the day had been, so warm that she had no need for her parka, not even as a blanket. Kanna found the nearest patch of soft ground and collapsed into dreamless slumber.

There was no telling how long she slept. The summer nights, especially this close to the solstice, were very short. Kanna supposed that they would have been getting midnight sun at home by now; the Northern Air Temple seemed to be too far south for that, though. When she woke, the sun was already rising in the sky, and the light was nearly blindingly clear.

Kanna got her first look at the Northern Air Temple and the Temple grounds in proper daylight. She… She had never seen so much green in her life. Everywhere she looked, there was long, green grass swaying in the breeze, growing freely in open spaces or sneaking out through cracks in flagstones. She ran her hands through the stalks, giggling like she was a child again and she had found a baby elephant rat nestled in her bed sheets and covers.

She had never seen grass before. All Kanna knew of it was from stories she had heard from foreign merchants. Somewhere in the city, there was supposed to be sacred spring, the dwelling place of Tui and La's manifest forms. In that spring, there was supposed to be green life, grass and flowers and even trees, but Kanna had never seen the spring, and didn't know where it was. Grass is… It wasn't as soft as Kanna had been expecting, not at all. But she plucked a green stalk and broke it in two, and when she held the broken ends under her nose, the smell was just as she'd hoped. Like life and sunlight, undiluted.

There were flowers here, too. Kanna looked around in wonder. They weren't the flowers she knew at home, tiny scentless blossoms, nearly colorless, used in medicine and food. Neither did Kanna recognize them as any of the foreign flowers she had heard of. She saw tiny white and lavender flowers interspersed throughout the knee-high grass. Yellow blossoms on creeping vines showed their faces from crumbling walls, scenting the air with a faint, sweet perfume.

And there were trees here as well. The only trees Kanna had ever seen at the North Pole were the occasional small, gnarled trees, perpetually naked of leaves, possibly dead, clinging stubbornly to the thin layer of rocky soil. The trees she had seen on the shore and the trail leading here were of the same stock. Kanna had been told such tales that she had an image of all trees, of all real trees, as being massive things with trunks so vast and wide that Kanna wouldn't be able to fit her arms around them. They would have branches loaded down with green leaves, branches that stretched on out of sight. Truly wondrous things to behold, she imagined them.

Now, with real trees all around her, Kanna saw that her personal image of them was somewhat exaggerated. The trunks, brown and gray, were for the most part about as big around as she was; more than slender enough, Kanna realized, to slip her arms about. They weren't nearly as tall as she had imagined them. Certainly, most of them were taller than the tallest grown man; some of them were with a height of some of the buildings in the Temple complex. But Kanna could see all of their roofs, and none of them pierced the roof of the sky.

On the other hand, the leaves were fascinating. There were some that were thick, glossy and whose upsides felt waxy, and others that were veined and so thin that when Kanna plucked them from the branch and held them against the sun, she found that she could see through them. It was truly remarkable.

Kanna's observations were abruptly cut short by the loud growling in her stomach.

Despite being safely alone, Kanna blushed. Hunger had finally found her again; she had been so absorbed by her surroundings that she had forgotten.

I ate all of the food I had left yesterday on the trail, Kanna reminded herself, resisting the urge to slap her forehead. Nonetheless, she checked her bag, seeing if there was possibly something left over that she missed. Nothing.

Kanna sighed and looked around. I'll have to see if there's anything here I can eat. If there isn't, I'll have to move on earlier than I thought.

As far as a search for food went, the interior of the Temple was out. They had almost certainly possessed storehouses and granaries, but after thirty-five years, Kanna doubted that anything would be left. What food the Air Nomads had stockpiled was likely rotted and disintegrated by now. On top of that, whenever Kanna looked at the Temple, she had to tear her eyes away. She heard the wind moaning through the open windows, and it sounded too much like the plaintive cries of a wolf on a moonless night for her liking.

Were there any animals she could trap and eat? Kanna moved around as quietly as she could, looking for animals, or any of the telltale signs of their presence, such as paw prints or nests or burrows, feathers or animal droppings or things like that. She could have at least found eggs to fry, until it occurred to Kanna that she had no pans to fry them in. But this terrain was unfamiliar, and the most Kanna saw was bird nests too high up in the trees for her, inexperienced tree climber, to reach.

She'd have to go looking for edible plants. Kanna swallowed down on the curse on her tongue, telling herself, despite the fact that there was no longer any need, that it wasn't proper for a woman to swear. She knew how to forage in the arctic wilderness, and in her naïveté had thought that all of the—admittedly few, she could see that now—plants she was familiar with would be available here as well. But looking around, Kanna couldn't see anything that she knew, and even as unfamiliar with the rest of the world as she was, she knew how dangerous it was to eat something if she didn't know what it was.

There was nothing for it, however. Kanna would have to find something here to eat, or else move on now, and hope that either she found something she recognized, or that there was a town close enough nearby for her to buy food before she starved. "Better get started," she said to no one in particular, staring to look around the grounds in earnest.

Kanna found nothing close to where she had laid down her parka and her bag. She fanned out and around, and she found grass, paths choked with weeds, and low, crumbling walls. She even found what she suspected was a well. Kanna had been told that, in lands where the ground was not perpetually covered in ice and snow and water was not immediately available, the people relied on rain barrels or on drilling deep into the ground until they reached an aquifer or other water source (the aforementioned 'well') for their water. There was a circular wall of stone around a deep hole in the ground, so deep and dark that Kanna couldn't find the bottom. Kanna was told that people got water out of wells using a pulley system involving rope and a bucket, but while she saw a metal post (badly rusted) to the side of the well, she saw neither rope nor a bucket. After all this time, they had probably rotted. Oh well. The stream that Kanna had spotted feeding into the sea could be found here as well. She'd get her water from there.

She saw all of that, but nothing that looked like it was edible. Kanna kept on walking.

She wandered out past the Temple grounds, into the hills, until the Northern Air Temple was nearly out of sight. There were still the stone paths, however, even choked with weeds as they were, so she didn't worry about being lost.

Eventually, she came across a sight that struck her as manmade. In a small field, there were sixteen trees in rows of four. Kanna spotted yellow fruit hanging from their branches, and hurried down to the field, urged on by her growling stomach.

There were branches hanging low enough that she could pluck one of the yellow fruits off and examine it more closely. Kanna held the fruit in her hand and stared at it. It was pale yellow, almost but not quite round, about the size of her closed fist. The skin was smooth and unblemished. She held it close to her nose and breathed in a sweet scent.

Staring at the fruit, Kanna was struck with sudden indecision. Yes, she was hungry, and wasn't likely to get any less hungry as time wore on. On the other hand, dying of inedible fruit sounded like a horrible way to go, and while it would be quicker than starving, it didn't sound any more pleasant. Kanna had no desire to die, in pain and quite alone, on the ground beneath the trees, so soon after she found the outside world.

But the position of the trees, in neat rows of four, all the same distance from the ones next to them, was obviously manmade. If so, Kanna couldn't help but think that these trees, fruit-bearing trees, were probably being grown so that their fruit could be eaten. There must have been children living here; the adults wouldn't have risked growing trees with fruit whose flesh was toxic, not where so many innocent children could have grown hungry one summer's day and plucked a fruit from a low-hanging branch, not knowing that it would kill them.

She looked at the fruit again and sighed. "Well if I die," Kanna muttered, "let it be said that I died in the name of exploration," and took a bite from the fruit.

The flesh wasn't bitter or acrid to the tongue, which Kanna knew to be the biggest warning sign that something was inedible. In fact, it was quite pleasant, sweet and full of water, but also possessing a tart undertone. All the same, she took only one bite, and waited a few minutes. When her stomach didn't begin to hurt and she didn't feel as though she would be sick, Kanna threw caution to the winds and rapidly devoured the rest of the fruit, avoiding the hard part in the center. She plucked two more and ate them as well, finally finding an end to her hunger.

Satisfied, and grateful that she had found what seemed to be a reliable food source (even if her diet would be rather unvaried while she was here), Kanna started to head back towards her 'camp'.

A glint of something white caught her eye.

"AHH!"

Kanna screamed and stumbled backwards, falling to the ground. By a low, half-collapsed wall, there was, by chance, no grass. Kanna didn't know why there wasn't any grass there, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was the sight it exposed.

There, she saw three skeletons. One bore the rusted armor of the Fire Nation; Kanna had seen Fire Nation captives brought into her city before, and would have recognized that armor anywhere. The other two… weren't. One was a skeleton that, Kanna guessed, belonged to someone about her size. The other was somewhat smaller. Ragged strips of yellow and orange cloth clung to their bones. The jaw of the smaller skeleton was missing.

Suddenly, the heat grew oppressive, pressing down on her back and shoulders. Though Kanna had just eaten, and the fruit she had eaten was full of water, her throat grew as dry as tanned leather.

It wasn't a mystery, what had happened to the Air Nomads. Everyone knew what had become of them, and of the airbenders in their Temples, even in so remote a place as the Northern Water Tribe. It was why they had gone to war with the Fire Nation, after all. Everyone knew that, thirty-five years age this autumn, the Fire Nation had massacred the Air Nomads, killed everyone of them, down to the last infants asleep in their cribs.

No one really went to the Air Temples anymore. The elders of the Northern Water Tribe warned their young men away from it. They said that, after so many violent and untimely deaths, the Temples were no longer places of peace. The Air Temples must now be filled with the ghosts of the deceased, wanting justice or vengeance. It seemed inconceivable that they would not be, after such atrocities had been committed against the Air Nomads. And wasn't the missing Avatar supposed to be an airbender?

Well, Kanna hadn't seen any ghosts, but she had found the bones.

They… They didn't even dispose of the dead.

The Northern Water Tribe disposed of their dead by wrapping the corpses of the deceased in cloth and consigning them to the ocean. From what Kanna understood, the Fire Nation immolated their dead, as soon after death as possible. The Earth Kingdom buried their dead in the ground. She didn't know how the Air Nomads dealt with their dead, back when there had been Air Nomads to do so, but she was sure that they must have done something. Every culture had a method of dealing with their dead, funeral rites to carry out. But this… This…

They'd just left the bodies to rot under the open sky. Not just the Air Nomads, but their own people. If the Fire Nation acted according to their own funeral customs, they could have disposed of the dead quickly enough, and left before the ensuing blaze killed them as well. It would have been so easy, so easy to pay even a modicum of respect to the dead, but they had not. They had just left the bodies of the enemy and of their own people to rot under the open sky, to be scavenged by passing beasts, to lie here, forgotten, disrespected. Suddenly, Kanna was both glad for and terrified by the long grass, wondering what was there that she'd missed. Every time something had cracked and crunched beneath her feet… Had that been bone?

Other thoughts swirled up into the forefront of her mind. Kanna imagined the Fire Nation turning their murderous eye on the Water Tribes. She imagined their dreaded ships sailing on the city of her birth, right now at the summer solstice when waterbenders were weakest and firebenders were supposed to be strongest.

No one would be spared, and everyone would die. Her parents, her seven-month-old sister Nissi. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, all of them would be killed. Pakku and Yugoda would both be killed. Her family, her closest friend, the boy she was supposed to marry, the boy whose betrothal necklace she still wore, all of them would be killed, their bodies left to rot the way the Air Nomads were. Everyone she loved would be killed, all because the Fire Nation feared the might and power of others.

Don't think about that. Not even a little bit.

Kanna told herself not to worry. She told herself that even during the summer solstice, the Fire Nation could never get past her peoples' defenses, and surely would not be able to lay waste to her old home, nor kill the people she loved. And she did not need to focus on them any longer, nor even think of them. She told herself, as she had been for days, that she could not go back, she could not go home, and that it was no use thinking about them. She would never see any of them again.

As she made her way back to her makeshift camp, Kanna made sure only to walk on the paths. Every time something crunched beneath her feet, she flinched.

-0-0-0-

The nights were remarkably clear here. Maybe she was just above the clouds, and did not have to deal with them as she did at home. After checking the grounds for any hints of bone or other skeleton-related debris, Kanna laid down on her back in the grass, staring upwards into the glittering hosts of the stars, feeling the crisp, mild wind blow over her skin and fill up her mouth.

Her maternal grandfather taught her how to read the stars before he died. She had been only twelve when he passed, but in that time, he taught her the constellations, the passage of the stars, how they traveled. Their names and stories. That seemed like a safe enough topic for Kanna to dwell upon.

Of course, she soon realized that there were no stars to be seen. They might not have been far enough north to get midnight sun, but the world was locked in a sort of hazy reddish-violet twilight, too dark to properly be called day, and too light to be called night. It had been getting lighter with each night, she noticed. By the time of the solstice, perhaps there would be some midnight sun after all.

This was where Kanna would be staying until after the summer solstice. No one would think to look for her here, and after that day had passed, she would consider it a safe truth that no one was looking for her anymore. At the very least, she would be able to journey further south without having to fear being waylaid by one of her own people.

After that? Kanna didn't know what was going to happen after that. She wanted to see the world, as much of it as she could. She could spend the rest of her life wandering, and still be satisfied, knowing that she had seen far more of the world than she would have been allowed to if she had stayed at home.

More than that, Kanna was looking for a place where she would be free. She had had it described to her: in foreign lands, women were free. They were free to go where they wished without procuring either escort or the permission of their male relatives. They were not treated like children, nor like disobedient, loose women who couldn't be trusted to keep a firm grasp on their virtue. They weren't expected to never speak unless spoken to, weren't expected to keep their eyes meekly and modestly downcast in the presence of a man who was not of their blood and not a childhood friend. Those who were benders weren't restricted to learning one small facet of bending. They weren't given away in marriage without their consent.

Perhaps there more than that, but this alone was more freedom than Kanna herself had ever been given. She might have had it better than some of the other girls at home—at least her father was willing to take her out of the city on hunting trips, at least until a few years ago—but Kanna knew that this was the way it was on account of her being an only child, and her father having no son to teach these things to.

In these foreign lands Kanna was seeking, surely things would be different.

In these foreign lands, there would be a new life for her.

Hopefully one fulfilling enough to take her mind off of the one she had left behind.

Kanna breathed a silent sigh. She kept waiting to hear someone's voice, her parents in the next room, Nissi starting to cry for food or attention. One of her cousins, or one of her aunts or uncles, or even her grandparents, come to call on Mom or the baby. Yugoda barging into the house without ceremony, Pakku lingering on the doorstep, waiting to be allowed inside. Looking at her hopefully.

The nights were very clear here. They were also very lonely.

-0-0-0-

It was raining.

Normally, this would be a matter only of small concern, and perhaps even one of celebration. At the North Pole, this time of year was the only time it was ever warm enough for even a slight amount of rain, and it didn't even come every year; Kanna had only seen rain for four summers of her lifetime. If it was raining instead of snowing, you knew that the summer solstice had to be close at hand.

If she was back home, Kanna would look at the light rains—for light was all they ever were—and she would smile. A solstice was a time for celebration and festivals, even if it wasn't the solstice that gave waterbenders their greatest strength. But here, the rain was heavy. It came down and hit her head, back and shoulders like pebbles. It felt more like hail, which was not celebrated at the North Pole, not by any stretch of the imagination, than it did like rain.

Kanna grabbed her bag and her parka and ran. There was nothing for it; she would have to seek shelter inside of the Temple. Thankfully, she quickly came upon an unlocked door, and dove inside.

Inside, the pounding of the rain on the roof was thunderous and yet oddly distant. Kanna had a feeling that if she went up in one of those soaring towers, the noise would be deafening, but she didn't know how to get to them, so she didn't try. And after a moment, she decided that even her curiosity at seeing how far she could see from the top of the highest tower was not worth the risk of deafening herself.

The windows had not shutters or coverings on them—they had either rotted away, or had never existed to start with—and yet, none of the rain got inside the hall Kanna had fled in to. Apart from the puddle forming at her feet, the hallway was completely dry. On the other hand, the wind howled and moaned in the hall, sneaking in through the windows and moving where it would, waiting for someone to answer, and finding no one. Everything was washed in a dim, watery-gray light. The ends of the hallway, backwards and forwards, were obscured by deep shadow.

Kanna let her bag and parka drop to the floor. Who knew how long the rain would last? She had never encountered rain so strong; it could last for days, for al she knew. She didn't just want to wait in one spot for it to stop; Kanna loathed inaction and apathy. Sucking in a deep breath, Kanna began to walk down the hall, wondering what she would find.

What she found, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, was the occasional skeleton and pile of scattered dry bones. When Kanna saw those, she swallowed hard, and told herself to be careful where she stepped. It was disrespect enough to the dead to leave corpses to rot under the sky. She shuddered to think of the level of disrespect conveyed by stepping on someone's desiccated skull, even by accident.

This was a house of the dead, and the dead kept it. Kanna was the only living human in the Northern Air Temple; the only living things were whatever small animals might have taken up residence in the eaves. There had been no one living here for nearly thirty-five years, not since their lives were snuffed out like tenuous candle flames.

She tried to imagine what this place must have been like when it was still full of life. There would have been monks walking these halls, instead of just her, men or women or maybe both; Kanna wasn't sure. Those vast, open spaces outside looked as though they would have been ideal for teaching young children airbending. The lawns would have had their grass clipped short, and as much as it pained Kanna to admit it, many of those trees probably wouldn't be there, either. The low walls wouldn't have been crumbling, and wouldn't have been covered by creeping vines and their yellow flowers. But Kanna imagined the air bright with laughter, and it didn't seem so bad.

What would the others have thought of this place?

Don't think about them. Her cousins probably wouldn't be too impressed; neither would her mother. Yugoda certainly wouldn't be impressed with the Northern Air Temple. Kanna couldn't recall her friend ever having any interest in traveling, or in life beyond the city walls.

Don't think about them. Her father might have been a little fascinated by this place. Kanna wasn't sure about him, but she knew that Kataro had done some traveling in his youth.

Don't think about them. Nissi was too young to tell. Kanna didn't know how her sister would be as she grew, if she would grow frustrated with her lot in life as her big sister had, or if she would be content with the life that all women in the Northern Water Tribe led. Despite herself, Kanna hoped for the latter. It meant that Nissi would probably never understand her, would probably never come to an understanding of why Kanna had to leave, but at least she would be happier with her life than her big sister had been.

Don't think about them. And what about Pakku? Kanna knew what he told himself: My duty to my tribe demands that I stay here, that I fill a certain role, that I act a certain way. That was probably how he kept discontentment with his life from seeping in. Still very kind, but managing to be hurtful without realizing it, thanks to his blind adherence to the status quo. All the same, Kanna had sensed the same restlessness in him that existed in her. He would look south, stare that way, and not take his eyes away from the southern horizon for a long time. Perhaps longing for something different, as she was. She might have asked him to come with her, if he hadn't been part of the problem.

She felt heavy, and tired. Suddenly, the halls seemed chilly and the omnipresent wind had a nasty bite to it; Kanna shivered, wishing she had donned her parka, cold in her thin, damp summer tunic and trousers. Don't think about them, she thought with little conviction, and kept walking.

In this house of the dead, Kanna found only silence, bones, and wind. What was she expecting to find? Enlightenment? Was she expecting to come to the holy place of the Air Nomads and find enlightenment, or inner peace? This was supposed to be a place for her to lie low for a while, and nothing more. Kanna didn't see how it was supposed to be anything else. She didn't see how it was supposed to give her peace, or purpose.

Kanna looked to her right and gasped, jumping backwards. Out of the stone, there was another shadowy face staring back at her.

A moment later, Kanna calmed down and cursed herself for a fool. It was only her reflection in the stone. But isn't that odd? Kanna frowned as she looked at the smooth, polished, highly reflective slab of stone before her. She had seen no other stones like this one in the Temple. It was almost like a mirror, and may well have served that purpose, but what was it doing here? Why was it here, and why was there only one of them in all of these halls that she had seen?

Her heart throbbing in her throat, Kanna stepped forward, and looked at herself in this floor-length mirror.

She saw herself, disheveled, wiry brown hair sticking out of her braid. Her trousers were stained with soil, and there were green marks on them that she suspected had come from the grass. There was dirt caked beneath her fingernails.

Kanna tried smiling. It was an old habit of hers, to practice smiling into a mirror. She'd become quite good at it, really, smiling on command, and found that her skill in the practice had not waned at all. She smiled, and all of her face lit up. All of it except her eyes. Her eyes hadn't smiled in years, and running away, seeking a new life, wasn't enough to change that.

Her hand went to the blue stone on her betrothal necklace on reflex. Kanna drew a deep, shuddering breath. Don't think about them. Tears splashed down her cheeks. Don't think—

She wailed with the wind, and slid down to the floor, sobbing inconsolably.

-0-0-0-

On the day of the summer solstice, Kanna was not ignoring the past so much as she was drowning in it.

She was sitting beneath one of the fruit trees. The rains had subsided, and the sky was a pale, dazzling blue, streaked with clouds so fine that they looked more like strained animal fur than anything else. If Kanna shut her eyes, her ears would be filled with the sounds of birdsong and whispering wind.

Today was the summer solstice, and Kanna could not keep it the way her people would have kept it. At home, there were festivals today, and if the waterbenders could not attend for the whole day, fatigued and needing to sleep, no one let this put a damper on the festivities. They would gather excess food for weeks in order to have plenty to eat today. No one would work; everyone, from the fishermen to the apothecaries to the dyers to the tailors and everyone in between would keep their shops closed and let their tools gather dust. Everyone celebrated, even if it meant nothing more than them taking a day to rest.

Kanna loved the solstices, and even if the winter solstice was held in higher regard than the summer, she loved the day when the sun never set. But now, she was keeping the solstice alone, and left to wonder about all the people she should have been celebrating it with, and could have been celebrating it with, if she had stayed at home.

Her parents, her parents must have been worried sick. Kanna swallowed hard, as at last she thought of the way the scene must have played out. Kataro and Irit woke one morning, and could only find one of their daughters. Nissi was asleep in her bassinet, peaceful, maybe even running her tiny hands over the obsidian hand mirror Kanna had left with her in fascination. Nissi would be there, but Kanna wouldn't. Irit especially would be concerned; she knew better than most that her daughter was an early riser. She would go into Kanna's room, and find the bed empty.

Maybe they wouldn't realize that she was gone at first. They would be worried, certainly, but their minds wouldn't immediately jump to the conclusion that Kanna had run away. Her parents would probably think that she had gone to visit relatives, or a friend, or even her betrothed. It really wasn't considered good manners for a young woman to go out visiting before her parents had woken up, and without even asking permission from them before hand. It also wasn't considered to go out visiting before the person you were planning on calling upon could plausibly be awake themselves. But Kanna doubted that her parents would first jump to the conclusion that she had run away, so they would probably wait a couple of hours for her to come back.

When Kanna didn't come back, they would go looking for her out and about in the city. Check the house shared by her paternal grandparents and her maternal grandmother, next to theirs. Check the homes of her aunts and uncles and cousins nearby. Check Yugoda's parent's house next, then Pakku's. Inevitably, they wouldn't find her anywhere, and would involve all of the people whose houses they had checked. After maybe half a day, it would finally occur to Kanna's family that she was no longer in the city, probably when they realized that one of Kataro's skin boats was missing.

Her parents must be worried sick. Her grandparents too. Kanna wasn't as close with her other family members, but they must have been worried too—she would have been worried if one of them had suddenly vanished.

Had they searched for her? Kanna had operated on the belief that they probably were searching for her, within the city and outside of it, but it occurred to her that this wasn't a sure thing. Her family wasn't poor, not by any stretch of the imagination, but neither of her parents could afford to just lay down their work for weeks or even several days at a time. It wasn't practical. Still, maybe they had searched. But they couldn't possibly be anymore.

Her parents could very well believe her dead, and even if they didn't, Kanna seriously doubted that they had any idea of why she had left. For all they knew, their daughter had just run away on a whim, without any care for how her leaving would hurt them. She had left, had hurt them, and probably didn't care.

Yugoda was likely hurt as well, and confused, wondering why her friend would leave home without so much as a backwards glance, without giving a sign, a warning. Pakku probably felt the same, but worse, wondering why she would run away. They were supposed to be married soon, in just a couple of months, and yet Kanna had run away. Him, the prospective groom, was left wondering why the girl he was supposed to marry had run away.

What they didn't know that she felt pain too.

Kanna knew that she had to leave. She was never going to be happy with her life, the way things were going. But that didn't mean that she didn't still miss them. That didn't mean that, when she was sitting beneath this tree, staring at the blue sky, watching the sun that never set, she didn't long for home. And Kanna couldn't see how she would ever stop missing home, and everyone whom she had loved. That was why she had to keep going, why she had to see as much of the world as she could. Maybe when she did that, the pain would ebb, and the emptiness in her heart would fill.

-0-0-0-

The day after the summer solstice, Kanna left the Northern Air Temple. It was time to move on.