Korra's Perspective

If there was one prominent thing in Korra's mind, it was the color blue. A soft blue, soft as the sky, fading into a light blue that eventually turned white. Eventually, where blue began and where it ended was a mystery to her.

Whenever she thought of the air temples, recalling them from memory, she always thought of the color blue first and foremost. No matter how many times she had been within the temples, how many times she explored, how much she learned, or how long she stayed. It was always the color blue.

When she went back down to the ground, and back home to her friends and girlfriend, it was blue that she imagined more than anything else, the blue that crept into her dreams and filled them till the sky was overflowing with color. The blue of the sky, and the pale blue of the clouds, for nothing was truly white up there. Everything was tinted with a palette taken from the heavens above, and the temple was never just a temple.

Sometimes, the stone was glossy, reflective. Most of the sides of the buildings were like that. Smooth and polished pieces admist the rougher textured stone that still looked smooth to touch. When the daytime was upon the temples, they shone various shades of blue and colors that bounded off each other into greens or purples or grays. Dark gray stone or dark green clay was no exception to the painted, artistic effect that consumed the architecture.

And then there were the sunsets and the sunrises.

When the sun touched the horizon, the sky exploded with a million colors; fiery hues mixed into dark jewel tones that bordered the edges of clouds turned to flame. Ambers and violets, pinks and golds, and pale cold stars up high in the deep blue depths that faded to black.

The temples mirrored all these colors; so many colors etched and painted across the high up temples detached from the world. Everything looked like a treasure chest, of gold and diamonds and opals of every color.

But when night came, it was dark and blue again.

Korra came to love these particular changes, of being in the Air Temples. Scenery like this was a far cry from the clogged streets and cluttered skyline of Republic City. The stars never shone in Republic City.

In the towers far up in the temples, where the air was thin and you had to use bending to breathe, an entire nebula was stretched across the sky for her to see.

"Beautiful," Korra whispered.

She sat down, cross-legged on top of a dial modeled in the stone. Wide-eyed, she gazed out at the sky around her, painted with a million stars and a thin mist of color against the black of the night. All around her was darkness and light and beauty.

And a haziness of color; all she had to do was look for it, and she would see it.

Tenzin had never brought her up this high. He himself had never been this high, at least as far as Korra knew. He usually stayed down below, with his siblings (if they ever decided to tag along), and spent the time reminiscing about the history, remembering all the times Aang had showed him how to fly off the side of the cliff.

So this was a rarity.

Korra could feel the presence of someone here long ago, using her spiritual powers. No one had sat in that specific spot for over two hundred years or so.

Korra felt all warm and tingling inside at this knowledge. Rare, indeed, she though with a small smirk.

She let it ebb off of her face before she pressed her knuckles together, and closed her eyes. Meditating had never been her strong point, but she kept getting better and better at it. At least she had been to the Spirit World. Tenzin hadn't taught her to chant, or to really do anything specific other than focus and control her mind.

Korra felt an ebbing within herself as she relaxed, surrendering herself to the sensations around, and her helpless place within the universe.

Long ago, it would have scared her beyond her wits. That someone as powerful and important as the Avatar could be so insignificant in the entire world, and even smaller in the entire universe. She didn't exist on the grandest of scales; no one did. And maybe years ago it would have scared her witless, but now it comforted her.

She had been trying to learn what it was like to be normal.

To just be a person.

She was Korra first, and the Avatar second. Having discovered her identity so young was what Tenzin had said had ruined her (though he didn't put it in those exact words). That because she had spent her whole life living up to her Avatar prowess, she hadn't learned to truly be herself.

But now she was trying.

Even when meditating on top of the highest Temples in the entire civilization of the Air Nomads, surrounded by a metaphysical entity that she knew wasn't Raava but the world itself, she felt freer than she ever had in her entire life.

It felt beyond heavenly to feel so free and detached, and she wondered why she hadn't done this sooner.

Korra's breaths evened out slower and slower, at the pace of every ten seconds.

Inhale, ten seconds passed.

Exhale, ten seconds passed.

And then it continued again. Tenzin had taught her to count out the seconds and wait, but now she didn't need to, because she had become expert at it.

You've grown so much, Tenzin had said to her just hours earlier.

And I'll continue to grow, Korra thought to herself.