Notes: Written for this prompt for queer_fest 2011: Avatar: The Last Airbender: any Avatar. As the Avatar grows, they struggle to balance their duties and their real gender.

Some foreign words are used; there is a glossary in the notes at the end. Concrit is welcome. Also posted on LiveJournal (username: melodytree).

Kyoshi is born in a small village on the shore of a small peninsula at the southern tip of the Earth Kingdom. The midwife coos over how she is such a cute, healthy-looking baby, while her brother peers over the edge of the bed and stares at his wrinkly new sister.

When she is four years old, some people come to their little village and ask to see all the children born within a few weeks of Avatar Kuruk's death. Kyoshi is presented with hundreds of little toys, but the ones that delight her the most are a simple little drum, a worn wooden monkey, a little spinning fan that flies like a whirligig, and a detailed little turtle. She never notices the strangers talking amongst themselves, and only knows that they will let her have those four toys.

At five, her mother finally lets her follow her brother Tarou to his sword practice, so long as he promises not to let her get lost or hurt. She sits to the side, fascinated, as the instructor leads Tarou through various exercises. When Tarou comes to get her, she springs up.

"I want to do it too!" she says, clasping her hands.

"You're a girl," Tarou says. "You can't sword-fight."

"Can so!" Kyoshi lowers her hands.

"Can not! Girls are supposed to take care of the house and the village and boys go off and fight in the army."

"Says who?"

"Says everyone!"

Kyoshi has never heard this before and refuses to believe it. She glares and opens her mouth to start arguing again when the sword master clears his throat.

"Now, now, that's not entirely true, you know. I've trained more than one young girl, Tarou."

Kyoshi sticks out her tongue at her brother. "So I can try too, right?"

"Maybe when you're a bit older," the sword master says, but he's smiling and friendly and Kyoshi thinks he's telling the truth.

When they get home, though, and her brother has gone off with his friends, Kyoshi tugs on her mother's skirts. "What is it, Kyoshi?" Mother asks, crouching down to her level.

"Why am I a girl?"

Mother raises an eyebrow. "Because you were born that way."

"Can't I turn into a boy?"

"Why would you want to do that, Kyoshi?" Mother is frowning.

"Tarou says boys fight and girls stay home. And I wanna learn swords."

Mother sighs. "When you're old enough, you can take sword lessons too." She starts to stand up, but Kyoshi pulls at her arm.

"And can I fight too?"

"Why do you want to do that?"

"It looks fun." Tarou seemed happy at the end of the lesson, and the whole thing looked a lot like playing, anyway.

"If you want to, I suppose there's nothing to stop you," Mother says, and this time when she stands Kyoshi lets her.

Kyoshi follows her brother to practice every day, sitting and watching and memorizing his moves.

She's almost six when she starts school in the spring, having been born not long after the cutoff date, and her days get busier. She wakes up, gets ready for the day, goes to school, follows her brother to practice, and then when she gets home her mother makes her do her homework and then she can go play. She makes sandcastles on the beach and fortresses made of mud, little towns with streets lined with rounded pebbles. It's fun. The only bad part is having to scrub the dirt off of her hands and feet afterward.

One day, she gets into an argument at school. She and some other kid are screaming at each other about something that doesn't even matter anymore, shoving at each other, somebody has run to get a grown-up and it feels like something clicks. This time when she shoves, the earth shoves as well, and the other kid moves several feet farther than Kyoshi expects.

"You're an Earthbender?" somebody asks, and Kyoshi shrugs because she must be.

Now when she plays she practices her Earthbending as well. She starts with using it to line up the pebbles on her streets and to make the houses better-looking, but soon she starts using it to throw rocks around and make holes the time her parents decide to plant a few fruit trees.

"You really should have a formal teacher," her mother frets, but there's only one other Earthbender in the village and he's not really the teaching kind, so Kyoshi digs her toes in the dirt and practices on her own.

"When she's older, perhaps she can go and find a teacher," her father says.

At eight, she begs her mother to let the sword master teach her, and after a few weeks mother finally gives in. The sword master lets her pick up a sword and starts to teach her how to use it. Before long, he makes a comment about how she learns faster than her brother and Kyoshi throws Tarou a proud smile. Girls can't fight, hm?

When she is ten, a new man moves into the village. A retired soldier, Kyoshi hears, ready to settle down and make a family and perhaps teach his art. During the welcoming party people keep asking for a demonstration, and he finally gives in and pulls out some fans. At first Kyoshi is confused, but then she sees that they are made of metal, not soft wood and paper. The soldier starts to move, explaining what each form is for as he slides through it, and Kyoshi is utterly, utterly captivated.

The next day she skips sword lessons to beg the soldier for lessons with tessen instead. After a few minutes he agrees. He shows her how to hold them, and when he slides them into her hands, oh. They feel right, like an extension of her body, as her sword teacher had often said but as she had never felt. Later mother makes her go and apologize for skipping out on the lesson and inform him that she has a new teacher, but it is worth it.

When she goes to play, sometime she brings a couple of her wooden fans to practice. It doesn't take long to discover that she can use the fans to focus her Earthbending as well as she uses her hands. She raises stone soldiers and builds a stone house and pretends that she is the only one between her family and the invading army. A boulder crushes one soldier, a sinkhole sinks three more, and Kyoshi doesn't even notice her brother has come to fetch her until he laughs.

"You look like a boy!" but this time he's grinning. Kyoshi brushes back a lock of sweaty hair and shrugs.

"Why?"

"'cause you're covered in dirt and you're wearing pants. Need any backup?"

Kyoshi destroys the last soldier with a harsh kick that smashes it to pieces. "I'm good. Just give me a minute to clean up."

Kyoshi decides she might wear her pants more often.

At twelve her breasts start growing in. Kyoshi is dismayed to find the lumps on her chest one day after she strips off for a bath. Before too long her mother starts to fuss about her going topless and hands her a book about 'the changes your body is going to go through in the next few years'. The book mostly makes Kyoshi's skin crawl. None of it sounds pleasant - blood pouring out, hair growing in odd places - well, okay, the part about growing taller sounds fine. But when Kyoshi looks down at her chest, she wonders why it has to change and resists the urge to push her breasts flat again.

Then she comes to the part in the book about menstruation, and reads 'Women with low body fat, such as athletes and highly athletic Benders, do not menstruate' and gets an idea.

She throws herself into her tessenjutsu training, working hard with her teacher, and then pushes herself alone to improve her Earthbending. She's always been on the lean side from running around all the time, now she just strives for that.

Still, it doesn't stop her breasts from developing, or her hips from widening, and Kyoshi strips naked before a bath and stares at her reflection and wonders why it looks so different from her image of herself. It was fine before, but now it's just so... feminine, Kyoshi thinks. Now she can't be the little brother, can she?

Hm. She squishes down her breasts with one arm and imagines a loose shirt over her shoulders. Perhaps if she could bind them flat...

The next day she wraps sarashi around her chest and chooses a loose robe and her favorite pair of pants. The reflection in the brass isn't a girl, although it's not exactly a boy, either. Kyoshi shrugs and is happy with that.

Though, it's not always so bad to look like a girl now. Mother sews her a nice dress, green with gold edging, and Kyoshi falls in love with it. The full skirt twirls away from her when she spins, and she doesn't care about her hips or chest when she wears it. On the days when it fits her, when she feels in the mood to wear it, it makes her happy, and she wears it to pieces.

Mind, it's getting short by then. Mother makes her clothes with generous growth hems and tucks, but Kyoshi needs them taken out every month, and quickly outgrows them. The one good thing about puberty is how tall she is getting, taller than her mother now, catching up to her brother.

In-between taking out growth hems somewhere, Mother decides that it's time for her to sit down properly and learn to sew. It isn't exactly a disaster - she figures out how to thread a needle, how to sew on buttons and fix tears - but it doesn't exactly go well, either. The slow progress of small stitches is frustrating, like building a sandcastle grain-by-grain, and it's boring, and Kyoshi's back starts to hurt after too long, or her hand cramps. Kyoshi makes every excuse she can to get out of sewing lessons until Mother shakes her head and gives up on teaching her anything but the basics.

Cooking goes better. Kyoshi can see actual progress, and the whole thing only takes a couple of hours at the most, not days and weeks of work. It's fun to gut the fish and slice up the squid, to see the colors things change when she adds this or that, and she gets to eat some of it afterward, so long as she doesn't burn it too badly.

One day when she is fourteen, Kyoshi wakes up to blood on her underwear. She stares at it blankly for a few moments, before remembering her book and going to get cleaned up. She then goes back to bed and stares at her pillow for a long, long while. For the first time in a long, long while, she starts to cry. When Mother comes in and asks what's wrong, Kyoshi's throat is too choked up to answer properly. When Father asks if she's going to school, Kyoshi shakes her head vigorously and buries it back in the pillow.

"Maybe she's sick," Mother whispers to Father in the doorway.

"It won't hurt to miss a day or two of school."

Between the discomfort with her own body and the cramps now clutching at her stomach, Kyoshi doesn't feel like getting out of bed until dinner, and then only because Mother made her favorites. She shakes her head when asked what is wrong, concentrating on the delicious fish instead.

Her brother comes into her room at bedtime. "Hey."

"Hey."

He sits down beside her. "You sure you don't want to say what's wrong?"

Kyoshi frowns, but considers. "Have you ever hated your own body?"

Tarou shakes his head and flops down beside her. "What do you hate about it?"

"I started bleeding today."

"Wha- oh."

"And... I just wish I wasn't a girl."

"So you'd rather be a guy?" Tarou raises an eyebrow.

Kyoshi thinks about it for a moment, but the imagined male body doesn't quite fit either. "No, I don't."

"Well, you have to choose one or the other."

"But why?" Kyoshi frowns and adjusts her pillow. "I don't want to be a girl, but I don't want to be a guy. Can't there be something else?"

Tarou shrugs.

The next day Kyoshi gets up and goes to school. She goes to her tessenjutsu lesson afterward, except today there are no fans. Instead her teacher has her sit down cross-legged and tries to teach her how to meditate.

It's a struggle, sitting still and doing nothing for so long, but bit by bit Kyoshi reigns in her patience. After a few lessons she starts to understand what her teacher is talking about. She tries meditating instead of playing soldier, sitting on her little spot of hill by the ocean, and actually finds it better than she would have thought. Focusing on her breath, in-and-out, is calming, and sometimes she starts to feel that she is an extension of the earth she is sitting on. Sometimes she can't clear her mind, it insists on mulling things over, but she thinks that that might be a kind of meditation too.

One day she starts thinking about gender. Female and male. Yin and yang. Black and white- wait.

Black and white, black and white... but it isn't just black and white, there's grey too, so is it the same for people? In-between 'woman' and 'man', can there be something else?

There was a baby born, some time ago, when Kyoshi was seven or so. She suddenly remembers a group of people murmuring, is it a girl or is it a boy, you can't tell by looking... That child is a happy little girl now, but if there's a place between the bodies of men and women...

Kyoshi thinks of herself as a woman and frowns. She thinks of herself as a man and still frowns. Neither fits. But something between them, a girlish boy, a masculine woman, someone androgynous. Not black or white, but some kind of grey, perhaps shading towards black.

Hm. That fits quite well, actually.

Later, Kyoshi stares at her reflection in the bath and wishes she could change her body at will. How perfect it would be if she could have the breasts and hips on the days she wanted to be a girl, and wider shoulders and a flat chest for the days that she didn't. She. The pronoun fits better than 'he', and she's not about to use 'it', but... Too bad it isn't like the ancient language she has studied in school with gender-neutral tāas the pronoun for everyone.

After the bath, Kyoshi changes into sarashi and loose, gender-neutral kimono with extra cloth stuffed in the shoulders. In front of the new glass mirror in the hallway she turns back and forth. Her shoulders are naturally broad, and between the flat chest and tall height and widened shoulders she looks too masculine. She takes out the cloth from her shoulders and twists a different way. Hm. Now she looks too feminine, but she can't place why. She brushes her hair around a bit until it hangs differently, and maybe that's it - now she looks more androgynous. Kyoshi makes a note to cut her hair shorter - she doesn't like the idea of a ponytail but the way her hair drapes over her shoulders makes her face look too girly.

Her brother comes in and raises an eyebrow. "What's with the sudden vanity?"

"Finding the right shade of grey," Kyoshi says, but that's not really an answer. "Not in here," because she doesn't want to explain to her parents, so they go back to Kyoshi's room.

"I came to a revelation," Kyoshi says, after they have both fallen back on the bed.

"And...?"

"I don't have to choose," Kyoshi declares. "There isn't just 'male' and 'female'."

"Really." Tarou's eyebrow is raised again, she knows. "Why do you think that?"

"Look at me," Kyoshi says. "What do you see?"

"...my little sister?"

Kyoshi sighs. "Look."

The blankets rustle as Tarou rolls over and gets up on an elbow to look at her. Kyoshi sits up and stares at him.

"...my little brother?"

Kyoshi continues staring.

"...okay, I guess you don't really look like either. Or maybe both. I don't know."

"See what I meant?"

"I dunno. Just 'cause you look like that doesn't mean that you aren't one or the other."

"But this is how I want to look a lot of the time," Kyoshi says. "Dressing like this is the best way to capture my feelings - if I were to cross-dress completely, that wouldn't capture my feelings most days any better than dressing completely like a girl does most days."

Tarou doesn't say anything, just looks at her for a few more minutes and then up at the whitewashed wall. He seems to be thinking, so Kyoshi stays silent. She picks a book up off the floor and reads for a while.

"Okay, I think I kind of get it," Tarou says, finally. "It... you said earlier, that you were looking for a 'shade of grey,' right? So, basically, you're saying that gender is the same kind of thing. You can have different ratios of both sides."

"It's not either-or."

"Yeah. I think I can get that." He pauses. "I mean, I don't feel that way, but on an intellectual level I guess it makes sense. Kind of."

Good enough.

"Now that that's settled..." Kyoshi looks outside. It's still decently light out. "Wanna bet my fans can beat your sword?"

"No way," Tarou laughs. "Wanna bet you lose?"

They grin at each other before going to get their weapons and meeting outside. Tarou is older than her and has some advantage of strength - but Kyoshi is faster and for a girl's body she's actually pretty strong. Sometimes Kyoshi wins and sometimes Tarou wins, and as the last of the sunlight fades from the sky, Kyoshi's fans first deflect and then disarm Tarou's sword, so it's her victory tonight.

It's nice that Tarou understands (tries to, at least). Too bad nobody else even attempts to do so.

"Why can't you just be a normal girl?" Mother sighs one day, one of the days that Kyoshi binds her chest and adjusts the way she walks. Kyoshi tries to explain, but Mother shakes her head barely a sentence into the explanation. "Nobody's going to want to marry such a masculine girl," she moans. Kyoshi bites her tongue about not wanting to get married.

"You're such a boy, Kyoshi," one of Kyoshi's girl-friends says during their recess break. "You have a nice chest, why do you keep tying it down all the time? Why don't you like sewing?"

"Thanks, I don't always like it, and it takes too long to do right," Kyoshi answers, more concerned with the pebbles spinning through the air above her hand. She thinks she needs more practice with small bits of Earthbending. It's easy enough to throw boulders around, but it's been a while since she played with small rocks and grains of sand, and they take a more delicate hand...

"'Thanks'?" Her friend shakes her head. "You're so weird." But it's said in a friendly tone of voice, so Kyoshi ignores it. Then again, she ignores all the whispers that aren't friendly, too.

"I heard that she's trying to become a guy."

"Nah, she's probably just doing it for attention."

"She's the younger sibling, shouldn't she get enough?"

Nobody says them to her face, though that might be because she punched the last person who accused her of wanting attention. Really, it would be nice if everyone just left well enough alone.

For Mother's birthday, Kyoshi helps a neighbor chop wood in exchange for paint and Bends some clay into delicate koi fish that swim in every direction. The paint turns them bright colors, blue-green and calico and orange-and-white. The painting is tedious work, but Mother smiles so and the fish end up on the table in front of the hall mirror, where visitors can see them.

One day when Kyoshi is fifteen, her family is eating breakfast when they feel strong tremors. Once the earthquake ends Kyoshi throws aside the remains of the breakfast dishes and they all run out of the house and towards the high ground. The hill is steep - Kyoshi makes a note to carve out a proper staircase sometime, the old ones are breaking apart and wearing down. She helps tug her mother up the last few meters and turns to look back at the village. There's no tsunami on the horizon, at least not yet.

Suddenly a commotion breaks out. "Hey, don't go down," someone is shouting, while two parents, restrained by other villagers, shout for their two children.

"They were right behind us!"

"Why aren't they here?"

Kyoshi doesn't think.

"Where are you going?" Mother screams as Kyoshi slides down the hill as fast as the earth will carry her.

"Hey!" Kyoshi shouts, trying to remember where that couple lives. "Hey, get over here!"

She runs down the main street, sees a little girl clutching at a doll with one hand and a column with another. Kyoshi scoops her up, but weren't there two? Where is this girl's sibling?

"Kyoshi!" she hears faintly, and she looks over to see her brother waving on the hills. He sweeps his hands to wave to one side, and Kyoshi looks over just in time to see the water coming.

It crashes on her, at least it got back and not her face, and she can't breathe not just the water but all the air rushed out of her lungs when the tsunami hit and something bumps her ankle, something hard, and then there's a hand grabbing at her clothing and she grabs that kid with her other arm and kicks, not to swim but to raise the earth-

-and Kyoshi manages to gasp in half a breath of air before her lungs close up again.

Gradually Kyoshi gets her breath back, until she can finally breathe normally. The children are clutching tight at her arms. Around them swirls water, so much water, muddy brown and with bits debris carried with it. Kyoshi ignores the state of a village and raises a few feet of path, which gives her the space to raise the rest of one all the way to the hills. She pulls the children up into her arms and runs.

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank the spirits, thank you," the parents cry, hugging their children.

Kyoshi smiles at them. "Just make sure you two go uphill after an earthquake when it happens again," she tells the children, and then goes over to her own family.

Mother and Father hug her. "Oh, Kyoshi," Mother sighs. "How brave – but you could have been killed!"

Tarou manages to sling an arm over her shoulders. "Nah, Kyoshi's not going to die because of a little water."

Kyoshi snorts. "I nearly drowned down there, you know," and then it dawns that that might not have been the best thing to say in front of her parents, but they don't seem to hear.

The next day Kyoshi's back is horribly bruised, and there's a mark on her ankle, and odd patterns along her arms, but she's the village hero, so it's hard to complain too much. Thankfully, the village isn't too damaged, and it won't take more than a few days to repair everything.

"I think Mom might let you join the army after all," Tarou says, bouncing onto her bed.

"Why?" Kyoshi looks up from her book.

"I heard her and Dad talking," Tarou replies. "She was pretty impressed with what you did back there, she can't exactly claim that you're a delicate flower who could never stand the hardships of the army." A pause. "Do you still want to join?"

"What else would I do? I'm not going to become a housewife, and I don't have a trade. Besides, I like sparring." Kyoshi closes her book completely and drops it onto the covers.

"I guess you're right." Tarou sighs and tilts his head back to the ceiling. "I guess it's just a little hard to imagine my little sister – brother – sibling going out and killing people."

Kyoshi shrugs. "The world's pretty peaceful at the moment, isn't it? I'll probably end up more as a police officer than anything."

"True. I can see it now, some smart guy thinks he can beat you, and you shove a fan in his temple..." They laugh. "Speaking of which, the new Avatar's gotta be getting near sixteen, right? I wonder who they are."

"Or what city they're from." Perhaps Ba Sing Se. Or perhaps a little village like hers. "What kind of person they are."

"Or what they look like. Do you think any posters will find their way down here?"

"I can always send you one from wherever I'm stationed."

"If I'm not close behind you." Tarou stretches and looks out the window. "You want to see what it's like with a sword versus Earthbending?"

"Come on, Tarou, I'm still bruised from all that water." Kyoshi still can't even stand the thought of trying to sleep on her back.

"Hey, pactice for war when you don't have time to rest." He grins at her. "C'mon."

"...fine." Kyoshi stands and pulls her fans off the bedside table. "Let's go before the sun sets."

Kyoshi's sixteenth birthday is the best that she's ever had. She wakes up to find a new pair of iron tessen by her bedside table, beautifully made. While she washes her face she has an idea, and sits down with the fans and a brush and some ink. What to write... Her name would be appropriate, but to be honest she isn't so fond of the characters. 'Empty' or 'unprepared' 'child' never seemed terribly auspicious to her. She settles on 京士, capital samurai, pronounced only slightly differently.

After breakfast Father presents her with some jumble of cloth and hard plates, which becomes armor when unfolded. Mother hands her a small box, which opens up to reveal kabuki wax and heavy pigment. "Warpaint," Mother says with a smile on the corners of her lips. "It seemed like it would be the only make-up you would wear."

Tarou gives her a pair of boots perfectly sized to fit her feet. Good, solid boots that should last a long time, if Kyoshi doesn't sprout up and outgrow them again. She's taller than all of the boys at school, now, and her father.

"Thank you," Kyoshi says over and over again.

"Come on, show it off a little," Tarou says. "I bet you look awful intimidating in that armor."

Kyoshi changes into the boots and armor, and frowns at the mirror for a moment before reaching for the war-paints. She remembers a picture in a book, a long time ago, and tries to copy the make-up as best as she can from memory. A white base, and then red over her eyes and lips, black edging the red...

When Kyoshi is finished, she picks up her fans, flicks them open and closed a few times, and tucks them into her obi.

The boots are very comfortable and not too thick, so she can still feel the earth somewhat through her feet. The armor feels sturdy without restricting her movement. And the fans are just beautiful.

"Oh, Kyoshi!" Mother gasps when she walks back into the living area.

"Wow." Tarou stares.

Father says nothing, but his eyebrows raise all the way up.

Kyoshi turns back and forth a little before spinning around completely. Everybody stares some more, before Tarou bounds up and grins, saying, "Let's go outside, I want to see your Bending in that."

So they go outside, and Kyoshi finds that it feels like the earth just responds better to her new fans than it did to her wooden ones. Soon a few of the neighbors have come over to watch her. Kyoshi ignores them as she moves through a set that she picked up from a book.

"I guess you really are going to join the army," Father finally says. "You're going to have to use those skills somewhere, and it's not going to be in the mail system of Omashu."

Kyoshi nods as she finishes up another move and lowers her fans. "As long as you two don't mind."

Mother has her arms wrapped anxiously around her stomach, but she shakes her head. "It's your decision, Kyoshi. If you want to go, we won't try to keep you here."

Kyoshi smiles a little. "Thank you."

"So when are you leaving?" Tarou asks. "I mean, you've got armor, you've got weapons and talent, how much longer are you going to stick around?"

"I'm not sure yet." Kyoshi presses a folded fan to her lips. "I was thinking of waiting a little while to save up money, but I don't have anything more specific in mind."

"Glad to hear you're not in a hurry to leave us." Tarou slings an arm around her shoulders. "Though I was thinking of joining the army myself, so..."

"Tarou!" Mother looks even more worried now.

"Sorry mom, but the army pays pretty well and I've got these sword skills laying around..."

It's not a bad future, Kyoshi thinks. She and her brother in the army, hopefully together, and able to send some money back home. A chance to learn more Earthbending.

"Excuse me," an unfamiliar voice says. Kyoshi looks over to see an old man, and behind him are several more people. He's dressed like a monk, she thinks.

"Yes?"

"We have a very important announcement," he says. "We think it would be best if the whole village heard."

Everybody gathers around the main square of the village, waiting for the monks to speak. Why are they here? Do they want to build a new temple?

"We are here to announce the identity of the next Avatar," the head monk says. Instantly, everybody breaks out into murmurs.

"Finally," Tarou whispers. "I guess if a bunch of monks came down personally, it must be from somebody nearby. Which village do you think..."

Tarou doesn't get to finish the sentence, because the monk speaks again. "It is our honor to serve you..." he says, and he is looking directly at Kyoshi. "...Avatar Kyoshi."

What is she supposed to say to that? Kyoshi stares back at the monk, her mind blank. He and the other monks bow to her, low, foreheads to the ground, and suddenly the villagers are doing the same. Tarou is the last to do so.

After everybody rises the monks pull her away from the crowd, sit her down in-between some trees just starting to leaf out. "You will need to master the other elements, first," one monk says. "Fire, then air, then water."

"After you have finished mastering Earthbending, of course," another adds.

"She might have already, yes?" yet another monk says.

"In this little village? Well, we can let a master decide that..."

The first monk coughs. "We have already found teachers for you. They will not be dazzled by the prospect of teaching the Avatar. They will be as strict with you as any other teacher, and they are extremely skilled."

"After that, a spiritual teacher will teach you how to use the Avatar State – a state in which the experience of all your past lives flows into your body and you become extremely powerful."

"And of course, it will become your responsibility to keep the world at peace, and the nations in harmony and balance with each other."

"We know it's a lot to take in," one of the monks says sympathetically.

"Do you have any questions?"

Kyoshi takes a slow breath. "When am I to leave?"

"We will give you a few days to prepare and say good-bye."

"How long will I be away for?"

"Three or four years for each elements, and perhaps a year or so for traveling and learning other things."

"If you are truly homesick, no one will force you to stay away for all that time," someone else adds. "You should learn to become unattached to things that bind you to this world, but you are still young..."

A couple of the others frown at that. Kyoshi thinks that letters may be enough. Though, twelve years away from everything and everyone she has every known...

"Is there anything else you wish to know?"

"No."

The monks start to stand, and Kyoshi follows their lead. "In that case, we will let you go. When you are packing, remember that the Avatar has little need for worldly possessions."

Kyoshi nods, and turns to go back to the village. "Actually, if the Avatar doesn't mind, I have one question," someone says, and Kyoshi looks back.

The monk puts a finger under her chin and stares hard at Kyoshi. "Are you a man or a woman?"

Kyoshi feels her lips twitch into a smile and she holds back a laugh.

"She's a woman, isn't she?"

"I thought he was a man."

Kyoshi shakes her head and starts walking back to her village. She ignores the stares of people along the street.

When she enters her home, Mother and Father are sitting at the table, holding hands. Tarou sits down at the other end of the table and Kyoshi takes the seat across from him.

For several minutes, no one says anything.

"...I guess you're not going to join the army, then," Tarou finally says.

"I think that would be too biased for the Avatar," Kyoshi replies, shaking her head. "I suppose I'll still get to fight, at least."

"So, what's going to happen? They're going to take you off to train in the other elements, right? How long?"

"I depends on how quickly I master them. Maybe twelve years, maybe nine." It's been a while since Kyoshi has so closely observed the tablecloth, embroidered with eels and koi fish and seaweed, all in Mother's small stitching.

"Twelve years?" Mother echoes, and when Kyoshi looks over it seems that Mother is about to cry.

"Did they never tell you? The thing with the toys when I was little, that was a test... You never knew?"

Mother and father shake their heads. "They never said anything about it," Father says.

"Oh, Kyoshi..."

Suddenly Mother and Father are hugging her, and Tarou laughs and gets up to join in. It's a little smothering, but then Kyoshi remembers that she's not going to get these hugs again for a very long time, and buries her face into Mother's kimono. How long will it take for her to forget this scent?

"Hey," Tarou says once they break apart. "This is supposed to be something happy, right? Kyoshi's the Avatar- the most powerful person in the world. Should we, like, have a party?"

Kyoshi smiles. "I'm up for a party." Might as well enjoy the time she has left here instead of being homesick before she leaves.

Mother cooks her favorite foods that night, and Kyoshi's friends keep stopping by, wanting to know more.

"Did you always know you were the Avatar?"

"When are you leaving?"

"Are you gonna come back here some day?"

Kyoshi pours them tea while she answers, the same questions over and over.

"We're having a send-off party in three days," Tarou tells them. "Don't bring worldly possessions, just yourselves."

Finally the visitors stop coming and Kyoshi is free to retire to her room. She's far too jittery to sleep, bouncing up and off her bed every few minutes to pace the room a few times. When Tarou slips in through the door, he is welcome.

"You excited?" he asks, tugging her down to sit beside him.

"Yes."

"Nervous?"

"A bit." Kyoshi pulls up a leg to lean her head on. "It's a lot of responsibility, the world."

Tarou just looks at her for a second and then sighs. "I'm going to miss you. I guess I was looking forward to traveling together to Omashu, and maybe even training together. No parents to tell us what to do, just the two of us, and nobody to care if you're a girl or boy or both or neither... At least until we got to the army part, but still."

Kyoshi sighs. "It would have been fun."

"Yeah."

The moonlight glints off the iron of Kyoshi's fan as she flips it open and closed a few times. "I don't suppose tessen count as worldly possessions?"

"You were using them for your Earthbending earlier, I don't think they're going to complain." Tarou picks up the other fan and starts to play with it. "Hey, you changed your name."

Kyoshi shrugs. "I thought it would be a bit more intimidating for writing on a weapon."

"True... You get to keep the armor, right? 'Cause it looks really good on you. And what about tea sets? Are those worldly?"

Kyoshi mocks a look of horror. "Something so necessary for survival? What else would we drink?"

"Bison milk?" Tarou laughs at Kyoshi's face. An air nomad stopped at their village once and offered them a glass, and it had taken every last bit of Kyoshi's manners not to spit the milk out again. It was so sour! She shuddered to think that they put it in tea.

"Hey, you're going to do a good job, you know," Tarou says suddenly.

"Do you think so?" Kyoshi's fan snaps as it closes.

"Why wouldn't you?" Tarou tosses his fan back somewhere on the covers. "The Avatar spirit picked you out of all the babies in the Earth Kingdom."

"That's true." Kyoshi tosses her fan to join the other one. "It's... there's a lot to think about. Politics. Bending." She shrugs. "And I guess I'll have to choose one."

"Huh? Choose one what?"

"Tarou... you can accept the idea of someone who isn't a 'man' or a 'woman', but most people can't. And I have a duty to those people... it'd just be easier if I let them see me as a woman."

Tarou sighs. "I guess, but isn't there something about having a duty to yourself, too?"

"Not as much as one to the world."

Kyoshi enjoys her last few days in the village as best as she can. She runs barefoot through the surf, not caring about the shade her toes turn as they become numb in the icy water. She climbs the tallest tree she can find, all the way up to the top, because she knows she won't get hurt if she falls because the earth will catch her. She watches a candle at night, when she can't sleep, mind almost meditative as she watches the flame dance upon its wick. She helps Mother plant the seedlings in the garden, making sure every little plant has plenty of room around its tiny roots, and forgets to wash her hands afterward.

The third night, there is a party. Kyoshi feels girlish, so she pulls on a female kimono over no sarashi. They light candles in colored paper lanterns, and someone writes her name on one, 虚子, and then on another the name on her fans, 京士. One of Kyoshi's friends brings a box of a variety of tea Kyoshi's never heard of, 'for the journey', and they all crowd around to taste it. It taste like grass, almost, but a little sweeter. Like spring, maybe. Mother makes her favorite food, and Father brings out their best plates and bowls, and they eat so well.

At dawn, Kyoshi hugs her parents, picks up her back, and walks off towards the monks, who are waiting for her at the edge of the village.

"Wait up!" a voice suddenly calls, and Kyoshi turns to see Tarou running after her. "Tarou, what-"

"I'm joining the army, remember? We're going the same way for a while, we might as well go together."

"Come on, then." Kyoshi takes off again and ignores his huffing and footsteps.

The trip starts off quietly enough. There doesn't seem to be that much to talk about, and besides, the early morning light and stillness is too nice to break.

"So..." one of the monks says, as they get onto a path that seems to actually be used. "Which are you?"

"Which?" Kyoshi pauses for a moment to adjust the straps on her pack.

"A man or a woman? We need to know if you will be sent to either the East or West Air Temple, or the South or North."

"Don't you guys remember from when you visited to find who was the Avatar?" Tarou raises an eyebrow.

"Children are very gender-neutral sometimes," someone murmurs.

Kyoshi frowns and sighs. "Physically, I am female," she says, and stares hard at the road.

"Physically?" Kyoshi knows she must be getting an odd look.

When she doesn't reply, Tarou answers for her. "Kyoshi's a guy in her head, sometimes. Or somewhere in between. She- he- Kyoshi's dressing like this on purpose, so you can't say it looks like one or the other."

The monks murmur among each other for a short while, before the conversation dies out again.

Kyoshi finds she likes traveling through thick forest. Birds twitter here and there, a rabbit-squirrel skitters across their path, a turtle-mouse startles when someone nearly steps on it and squeaks loudly enough to make everyone jump. It's peaceful. Too bad she doesn't have the time to properly explore.

They stop at noon to eat and drink water from a small stream they come across that seems clean enough. The fish Mother fried last night still taste good mixed with rice. Then they start walking again, and by the time night falls and they have to stop, Kyoshi is starting to become bored. The forest scenery doesn't change that fast, and she and Tarou can't seem to keep a conversation with the monks going for more than five minutes, and her feet are starting to hurt. It's a relief to pull her boots off and let her toes wiggle barefoot in the dirt.

By the end of the second day, Kyoshi starts to miss the ocean. But on the third they enter another town, and both Kyoshi and Tarou are fascinated. So many people! Kyoshi doesn't think she's ever seen so many in her life, not even when the local villages all got together for a harvest festival. She could spend hours in the marketplace, picking out vegetables and inspecting the pottery and listening to the musicians playing for spare coin, but the monks want to hurry on.

"Couldn't we at least get something to eat?" Kyoshi is starting to wonder if they had packed enough food before they left. Anyway, plain rice is boring to eat.

"I suppose we could stand a few supplies..." one of the monks says. Kyoshi and Tarou are almost gone before he gets out, "Don't stay too long, we want to leave in an hour!"

The pottery patterns are different here, and they have colors of thread that Kyoshi hasn't seen before. She tries not to linger too long, though, and focuses her energy on the vegetables. Not too much, at this time of the year, but there are bulbs and fresh greens.

They meet the monks after an hour and a half and start walking again. Now they start to see other people on the trail more than once a day, which is mildly more interesting. And the monks might be starting to loosen up, because when Kyoshi asks about their monastery, they are able to talk with each other for quite a long time.

It takes them a week to get to Omashu. "They really do have an Earthbending-powered mail system," Kyoshi says, leaning over the wall at the top of the city.

"Definitely below your skill level," Tarou says.

The monks let them explore on their own - this is where they will be staying for tonight, leaving early tomorrow morning. Rather, Kyoshi and the monks will leave, and Tarou will stay. Kyoshi sees the signs pointing towards the recruiting center but tries not to pay them too much mind. It's not until tomorrow.

They still have copper pieces from their jobs back home, but since Kyoshi won't be needing them soon and Tarou will be earning more, they splurge a little and get dinner at a restaurant. It's nothing fancy, just a little noodle shop that has good ginseng tea. Kyoshi feels a little thrill when the server calls them 'sirs'.

After their meal they wander through streets glowing gold with paper lanterns, the sounds of the mail being sorted still echoing through the city. Even after they go to the temple where they will spend the night, they don't sleep right away, instead whispering to each other until they can't talk any more.

Another farewell at dawn. The monks are waiting for Kyoshi, not impatient at least, while she holds her brother's hands at the gate of the city.

"I'll be fine," Tarou says. "So will you. We'll go make our parents proud."

"I'm sure we will."

They breathe in silence for a few more moments.

"...I guess we should say good-bye."

Slowly, Kyoshi lets Tarou's hands slip out of hers. "We should. We both need to get started on our own paths."

Tarou nods. "Right."

"Good-bye, then."

"Bye, Kyoshi."

They turn away from each other and start to walk off. Kyoshi has taken less than ten steps when Tarou call out her name.

"Just remember," he says, "you have a duty to yourself, too."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"And... write me if you can. I want to know what the Avatar training is like."

"Only if you tell me what military training is like."

Tarou nods. "Deal."

They wave to each other and turn away again, this time for good, and Kyoshi leaves with the monks while the sky is still purple-pink.

In Ba Sing Se they meet an Earthbending master. He is strong and cocky and Kyoshi doesn't remember his name. That might be partially because she only meets him a few times. The first time she beats him in a duel. He shakes his head as he climbs out of a pile of rocks. "Where on earth did you find her? Who taught you?"

"I taught myself," Kyoshi says, shrugging, checking her fans for damage and trying to ignore the bruises forming. She's had worse.

"Did you now."

The second and third times she actually learns a few moves. She also learns that she could stand to build more muscle after trying to catch a too-large rock and having it nearly fall on her head anyway. After that, the man leaves for somewhere, Kyoshi doesn't know, and for the last few days in Ba Sing Se she mostly watches other people. She's never really seen other Earthbenders before, certainly not this many, and it's interesting. This person moves this way, while that person moves that way, and they usually get the same result, but not always. And are all Earthbenders so unyielding, she wonders, as more than one student nearly collapses trying to best another, or nearly gets their head taken off by refusing to move out of the way of a rock until it almost too late.

Then again, earth tends to be unyielding. Kyoshi taps the rocky ground with her heel and feels the vibrations. She wonders how all these Earthbenders would do on sand. The beaches of her home village wouldn't absorb the energy given into it - it would reflect it, cause someone's movement to work against them and lead them to slip.

One night she meets the Earth King. Kyoshi stares at the mirror in her room, glass reflection staring back, deciding. She feels tātoday, not female, and a woman is what the king is expecting.

A duty to herself...

Kyoshi thinks of solid stone, and wraps her chest flat with sarashi, paints her face with war-paints and wears her armor. It's the fanciest her clothing will get, anyway, and she likes the way her reflection shimmers back and forth from one sex to the other.

The Earth King is less impressive than she expected. A short man, with an angled face and strength in his eyes, he speaks with a noble voice. Kyoshi feels almost ashamed for a moment, with her small-village accent, before she remembers that she is the Avatar and stands up straighter.

The monks leave her at the docks of a port city to return to their temple. In Kyoshi's hands is a scroll with directions from her landing port to the Firebending master that will teach her. Kyoshi distrusts the ship at first - far too much metal, it doesn't feel like earth at all. There is so much water all around, out to the horizon, and Kyoshi feels sick but not from the bobbing of the ship. The only earth is so far below the water Kyoshi could never touch it. No wonder it wasn't the Earth Kingdom to start great voyages across the waves. Kyoshi distracts herself by helping out around the ship, feeding the engines and cleaning equipment.

When she steps onto Fire Nation soil, Kyoshi sighs in happiness. Then she looks around, at the unfamiliar architecture and different-looking crowds of people and decides to go exploring. It won't hurt to start off tomorrow instead of today.

In the three days it takes Kyoshi to get to the Firebending master's school, she learns several things. First, that it is generally a good idea to order her food with the least amount of spice available. Second, that the fire flakes are quite good when not over-spiced. Third, that the highway robbers are not terribly sensible, what with deciding to assault a person capable of taking ten of them at once quite easily.

Kyoshi manages to arrive unharmed and a child greets her at the gate. "Are you miss Kyoshi?" he asks her, bouncing up and down on his feet. "Sifu Gao's been waiting for you!" Before Kyoshi can say anything, the child grabs her hand and drags her off. They pass several buildings before arriving at a large square that must be the practice grounds, because several students are sparring in one corner, several more doing drills in another, and even more watching others. An older man is watching everybody. "Sifu Gao!" the boy calls out, dropping Kyoshi's hand to go run over. "Kyoshi is here!"

The man - Gao - looks down at the child, and then up at Kyoshi. He calls to the students, tells them to take a break and get some water, before walking over to Kyoshi.

"Hello," she says, bowing. "I am Kyoshi. You must be Sifu Gao." She stops there, wondering if there is something else to say. She notices that the little boy has run off, probably to go find his friends.

The man nods. "Kyoshi, hm? I hope you don't expect that I'm going to go easy on you just because you're the Avatar."

"Of course not."

"Then's let's get you settled in and get started."

There is a small house for students staying at the school, one room for girls and one for boys. Kyoshi sets her pack down and takes a short look around the building before joining Gao outside again to get a start to her Firebending lessons. She wonders where they will start - on the ship she had tried more than once to make a small flame, but nothing had ever appeared, except for little heatwaves above her hand sometimes.

"Stand up straight!"

Kyoshi stands up straight.

"Bend your knees."

Kyoshi bends her knees until Gao stops telling her to crouch farther.

"Firebending comes from the breath. To control Firebending, you must learn to control your breathing." He leaves Kyoshi there to do breathing exercises and goes to look after his other students. It's a little relaxing, actually, like counting breaths for meditation.

After Gao has decided that she's done enough controlled breathing for the day he sends a student to give her a tour. Kitchen and dining area, Gao's office, infirmary, water pump, bathrooms, library. Kyoshi lingers among the books and scrolls for a few minutes, glancing over the titles, before letting the student take her back to the dining area.

After eating she heads back to the dorm building to unpack a little. Kyoshi starts with paper and writing materials. She should write to her parents, let them know that she has arrived safely, and perhaps she can send it tomorrow if she has time to find a post office. And a letter to Tarou, too...

The lanterns give off a pleasant warm-toned glow. Kyoshi likes the way it reflects of the ink as she dips her brush into it, and then when she waits for the ink on the paper to dry. When she finishes and folds up the letters, she looks up to see that most of the other beds are filled already.

"Hey, you're the new kid, right?" says the person next to her. "Kyoshi?"

"Yes." Kyoshi adjusts her ink-stone, lining it and the brush up neatly.

"Kind of a girly name."

"There's an author named Kyoshi, and he was a man," Kyoshi says, looking up at the other guy.

Wait.

Men and women in separate dorms...

Hm. Kyoshi has felt like a man today, and had dressed like it. Well, it probably won't matter where she sleeps.

"So what's your name?" she asks, settling back on the bedroll.

"Ming," he says. "What's someone from the Earth Kingdom doing learning Firebending over here?"

"My dad was from the Fire Nation," Kyoshi lies with a shrug. "I guess I inherited from him."

She stays up past everyone else, staring at the ceiling and not feeling that tired. Of course, it turns out that they are supposed to get up at sunrise. "Kyoshi, get up already," Ming says, poking her in the back with his foot. "You won't get any of the good food if you stay there long."

Kyoshi pulls herself out from under the covers. Suddenly she remembers that she doesn't have any binding on, but Ming's already walked off and she's wearing a loose shirt, so it's not too much trouble to go off to the bathrooms to wrap the sarashi on again.

For the next week Kyoshi does breathing exercises. She grits her teeth at the boredom and reminds herself that it's necessary, that she needs to be able to control fire as surely as she can manipulate earth. After that, Gao starts her on little exercises, controlling candle flames and such, before finally, finally, telling her to make a flame.

It's not much, hardly bigger than the candle flames, but it's a flame that shehas made. In that night's letter to Tarou she has to rephrase herself three times so as not to seem over-excited.

When she's not practicing, Ming shows her around the city. He is the one to show her the post office, the markets, the alleys where people gamble and the ones where they talk. Sometimes Kyoshi goes with the other students to eat noodles at the best noodle-shop in town, but more often she slips out beyond the city to play with the earth.

Six months in, and Kyoshi thinks she really understands the nature of fire. There's a feeling that comes with Earthbending, and now that she can actually do things with Firebending, she feels something there, too, not entirely different but not the same. Gao just nods when she asks about it.

After a year Kyoshi has caught up to those who have been here for three. No one seems to have caught on to the fact that she has a female body, yet, even when she is constantly slipping off for a few days every month and washing bloody cloths out later.

"You a genius or something?" Ming asks when Kyoshi asks him to help her out with one of the forms. "You're doing it perfectly. Sure you haven't been practicing since before you came?"

Kyoshi shakes her head and Ming shrugs and shows her a more advanced trick, which she basically picks up within an hour.

"Let's go out to get something to eat," he suggests when they finish practicing for the afternoon. "This new restaurant just opened, it's not that expensive but I hear the food's real good."

There's too much spice on the noodles, but the tea is perfect, some blend of the local tea with jasmine, and the other dishes are fine. They go walking afterward, along the river, the sunset painting it shades of red and orange. Ming keeps looking at her and away, until Kyoshi finally asks, "Is something wrong?"

Ming shakes his head. "Nah. Just, I'm glad we're friends. Nice to have someone good to practice with."

Kyoshi studies for another two years before Gao runs out of things to teach her. Ming finishes up at about the same time, and after she says good-bye to the school he runs out after her. "Where are you going to go after this?" he asks as they starting walking down the street together.

"Western Air Temple," Kyoshi answers, directions and a name written on a letter in her bag. "I want to travel a bit, see the world before I go home."

"Neat. When are you leaving?"

"When I get to the port," Kyoshi says.

"So... not gonna stick around, see some of the Fire Nation?"

"I wasn't planning on it." Kyoshi turns her head slightly. "Why?"

"My house isn't that far from the coast. I just thought, maybe we could go there, I could show you around a bit..."

The ship doesn't leave for two weeks. "Sure."

Ming's hometown reminds Kyoshi of her own village. They can easily go down to the beach and play in the sand and waves, or walk along it collecting seashells and flipping horse-crabs over to their stomachs, or watch the sunset. After the sunset finishes setting they might go to a local teahouse and drink their tea by a large fountain surrounded by lanterns. It's fun.

"Hey, Kyoshi," Ming says one night when they get back from the fountain, a week into Kyoshi's stay. "What's your type?"

"Type?" Kyoshi repeats, and shrugs. "Never really thought about it." She eyes Ming. "Why?"

Ming shrugs. Kyoshi rolls her eyes and grabs Ming's shoulders to kiss him.

She's never kissed someone before, never had much interest, but this is kind of nice, actually. Ming kisses back and it's messy and a little gross, saliva going everywhere, but it feels good anyway.

"Wasn't sure if you liked guys," Ming pants when they break apart again.

"I guess I do," Kyoshi says, and kisses him again.

The next day they kiss more, just off the beach, as the sun starts to sink low in the sky. Kyoshi copies things she's see couples do, moves her lips to his neck, and it makes Ming moan and slip a hand up her shirt. His hand slides up her stomach and over the sarashi-

He jerks away a little. "Kyoshi?"

"What?" Kyoshi looks up, annoyed at the interruption.

Kyoshi can hardly feel Ming's hand below the layers of cloth. It moves slowly over her bound breasts.

"You're a girl."

"No, I'm not."

"But you have-"

"I noticed. I'm not a girl."

"Well, you're not a guy," Ming snaps, and his hand fists in the sarashi.

"No, I'm not." He won't understand, but. "I'm both, or neither, or somewhere in-between."

"I don't get it." Of course not. "And if you're not a guy, why did you sleep in our room for three years? You lied about that for three years?"

"I didn't lie!" Kyoshi sits up straighter and glares. "I never said that I was a man. I never set out to hide that I have a female body - I didn't even bind, some days, when we didn't have practice."

"I can't believe this," Ming mutters.

Kyoshi grabs his hand, still under her shirt, and pulls it out, then stands up and walks off. She goes back to Ming's house to pack, because she might as well leave.

"Wait, Kyoshi," Ming says, suddenly standing in the doorway when she's halfway packed. "Look. I didn't mean to make you angry or anything. It's not that I don't like girls too-" Kyoshi glares at that, and he hastily corrects, "or anything else, I guess, it's just. I don't understand."

"Are you willing to try?" Kyoshi asks, stilling her hands.

"Sure." Ming sits down on the bed, next to her bag. "I... I like you, you know. I'm willing to listen if you want to explain. I can't promise I'll get it, but..."

So Kyoshi does her best to explain, and if Ming still doesn't quite understand, he seems to be trying. Before they go to bed he kisses her one more time, and by tomorrow they're pretty much back to normal.

When Kyoshi says good-bye, it's at a decent time of day, this time. "So what should I say, girlfriend or boyfriend?" Ming asks with a smile over breakfast. "She, he, it?"

"Tā," says Kyoshi with a smile. "Or whatever."

Kyoshi leaves at ten in the morning, and the trip is peaceful this time, no bandits. She gets to the docks with time to spare.

The Western Air Temple is... interesting. Kyoshi has never seen up-side down statues before, or buildings carved straight out of a mountain face. The air between the two sides of the valley is filled birds and lemurs and Airbenders on their gliders. And so many women and so few men, only as visitors. It makes Kyoshi somewhat uncomfortable when she doesn't feel female

The monks give her a few days to get used to things, to the food that is so bland after the Fire Nation's spices, to the high-up air that makes her dizzy sometimes, to the layout of the temple. Kyoshi does stop short of trying to get used to yak-butter tea.

Then the training starts. One of the monks starts by showing her basic stances. Kyoshi copies them until she can move through them perfectly, and when she tries to move the air as she does so, nothing happens. Not the second time, nor the third, and by the time the monk gently suggests that they take a break, she still can't get anything to happen. "You're trying to force it too hard," the monk says gently.

Air feels like it's always slipping away. It's not solidly there, like earth, or so energetic that it forces one to feel it, like fire. Kyoshi struggles through what the monks teach her.

One day, she's playing with her fans, swishing air back and forth. Swish, swish... like playing with pebbles. Swish, swish...

Swish...

Kyoshi repeats the move again and thinks she might get it.

When she tries the move she's been trying to perfect lately, she nearly blows herself off the cliff. After that, she practices Airbending with her fans more often than not.

The monks have a glider made for her, extra long to match her height, and throwing herself off a cliff with it feels like the stupidest thing she's ever done. Perhaps it is, because she promptly crashes. Even after she masters its use, flying makes her a little uneasy, no matter how fun it is. She belongs on the ground, not in the air.

Four years of training, and Kyoshi masters Airbending. One more to go.

The Southern Water Tribe is cold, of course. Kyoshi pulls her coat tight and doesn't mind the way it hides the shape of her body.

Waterbending reminds her of air, gracefully and fluid in the same way, but more solid, a happy medium between air and earth. Her teacher reminds her of Gao, stern in the same way. The village she stays at reminds her of her home village, the way everyone seems to know each other, how it's more friendly than the main city.

She's older than most of the other students, no longer a teenager, and doesn't socialize with them so much. More often she explores the tundra or reads what news she can find. A man named Chin is expanding his influence over the Earth Kingdom, and Kyoshi can't shake the bad feeling that he won't be satisfied until he has the whole nation as his own.

She masters Waterbending in three years in-between working odd jobs. When she has finished, she asks around for an old boat about to be scrapped. With a couple of patches, it's good enough to float, and with some Waterbending it doesn't take long at all to reach the Earth Kingdom again. There she sells the boat for a few coins and starts hiking up a mountain to find the guru.

It takes her several days to get up the mountain – it's steep, and hiking it is exhausting. When Kyoshi finally sees an old man meditating by a pond, she nearly collapse in relief at not having to climb more.

The guru teaches her about the chakras, about how she has to clear them to be able to reach the Avatar state. "The first chakra is the earth chakra, at the base of the spine," he tells her, and that it is blocked by fear. Kyoshi closes her eyes and thinks. What does she fear?

Crashing into a broken heap

a flood in the village from a tsunami no one saw

Chin overtaking the entire Earth Kingdom

and Kyoshi breathes out, lets those fears go.

"I don't suppose they'll all be that easy?"

"Probably not."

The water chakra is blocked by guilt. Kyoshi doesn't hold any deep guilts, so that one also goes easily. The fire chakra is blocked by shame. "Sometimes I feel ashamed of who I am, that I can't decide one or the other," Kyoshi murmurs to herself, and pushes those feelings away.

The love chakra is blocked by grief. Grief of her family, whom she hasn't seen in a decade. But they still love her, no matter how far away. The sound chakra is blocked by lies. Lies to Ming, all the time, and even to the others, wasn't it lying by omission?

The life chakra is blocked by illusion. "The greatest illusion is the illusion of separation. Things one thinks of a separate are actually the same. Even the four elements are just different forms of energy, if you are willing to look." Kyoshi thinks of that feeling she gets from any bending, and nods.

"The illusion that men and women are separate," she adds. "We speak about them as opposites, but the truth is that they aren't completely different, aren't they?"

The guru gives her a look and nods.

The final chakra is the chakra of thought. It is blocked by earthly attachment. "What attaches you to this world?" the guru asks, and Kyoshi thinks.

"My brother. Ming." They make her happy, even their letters, more than almost anything...

"You need to learn to let them go."

This is the hardest chakra to unlock. Kyoshi meditates for hours before she feels that she has entirely let them go, and opens her eyes to a world of starlight. Below her, an aurora like she would see during her time in the south, above her, the Avatar Spirit, and Kyoshi walks forward. Knowledge rushes over her in a wave of pure cosmic energy.

"Very good," the guru tells her when she returns to the world of the living. "There is only one more task for you – you should learn how to meditate and enter the Spirit World, so that you may meet your past lives. If you are ever in trouble, you can ask them for their wisdom."

Meditation is easy enough, entering the Spirit World slightly trickier. Kyoshi still isn't sure how she got through when she finds herself standing in a muddy swamp after staring at a wall painting for what felt like hours.

"Hello?" she calls, taking a step through the sludge. No one answers. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

"Hello there," a voice says from behind. Kyoshi turns to see a man in Water Tribe garb standing on the water. "It's nice to finally meet you, Kyoshi. I am Avatar Kuruk."

They perch on a giant tree root to talk. Kyoshi shakes the mud out of her boots while Kuruk speaks. "Learn from my mistake, Kyoshi. I didn't take my duty seriously enough," he says. "The world was peaceful in my time, so I played and flirted... and I lost my wife because of that." He tells her the story of how Ummi died, and Kyoshi feels like she almost remembers it. "But enough about me. You have anything you want to ask?"

Kyoshi shakes her head. "I think I have a pretty good idea of things. Protect the world, keep harmony, don't die in the Avatar State."

"Pretty much, yeah." Kuruk conjures a tea set out of nowhere and offers her a cup. "We might as well talk a bit while you're here, get to know each other a bit. "

Kyoshi accepts the tea and conversation.

After she returns, Kyoshi spends a few more days with the guru before leaving. She sends three letters as soon as she finds a post office, one for her brother, one for her parents, and one for Ming. She drifts her way back to her hometown, stopping to settle small disputes along the way. It isn't so difficult as she might have thought, but most people don't seem to want to argue when a tall master Bender with armor and warrior paint is staring at them. Kyoshi finds that she enjoys the masculine-woman look. It's good enough for dealing with people.

There is something sweet about finally returning home to the little village on the sea. The first person to see her is a young woman carrying a basket of vegetables who doesn't quite seem to know what to make of this stranger, but then Tarou comes out of a building and looks up to see her. "Kyoshi!" he shouts, and they meet halfway to each other to hug.

"You look great," Kyoshi tells him, and he does. There's a faint scar down the side of his cheek, but other than that he seems fine, and his time in the army has given him new muscle and a more confidant look.

"You too. Sure you didn't get any taller?" Tarou grins up at her. "Come on, Mom and Dad are practically dying to see you again."

Mother practically knocks the table over when Kyoshi comes in, she stands up so fast. Kyoshi hugs her parents and patiently answers all of their questions about her health.

"How long are you staying?" they ask.

"A few weeks."

Kyoshi insists on cooking dinner, showing off the recipes that she's learned from the other nations. Tarou swallows a large spoonful of heavily-spiced soup and Kyoshi can't help but laugh at the look on his face as he dives for water. "I told you it was hot!"

"I thought you meant temperature hot!"

Tarou and Kyoshi enjoy their vacation. They spar with each other – no Bending, just sword against fans, and they are still fairly evenly matched, with Tarou having perhaps a slight edge. Kyoshi obliges people when they ask for displays of Bending: small flames that dance over their palms, bubbles of water that absolutely delight the children, little tornadoes that made leaves dance in spirals.

A week or so later, Ming arrives.

"I missed you," he says into her shoulder, she says into his hair.

"So this is your home, huh?" Ming looks around the village. "Pretty."

Kyoshi nods, looking around, before grabbing Ming's hand. "I have something to tell you," Kyoshi says and leads Ming away from the village square.

"Well? Did you find a new boyfriend or something? I mean, I wouldn't blame you, I played around a little too, we haven't seen each other for years and letters aren't always enough-"

"I am the Avatar," Kyoshi interrupts bluntly.

"Really."

Kyoshi flicks open a fan and swings it towards the ocean, up; a wave raises itself up and crashes down again. In the opposite direction and the earth splits open. Straight up and the branch above bends up in the sudden breeze. Kyoshi flicks the fan closed and sparks dance around the metal.

"...really." Ming nods slowly. "Okay. Any other major secrets you've been holding, then?"

"My father isn't from the fire nation. I've been mastering the elements for the past seven years."

"Yeah, I kinda figured."

Ming's not exactly as she remembered him – but then, it's been seven years, and letters only carry so much. Anyway, a few days and they get along perfectly fine again. Kyoshi and Tarou and Ming sit on the beach at night, the moon making the sand glow, and talk for hours until they start to fall asleep.

"Well, I guess that does explain the changing-genders thing," Ming says. "The Avatar's been both male and female in the past, right? And if you have bits of all those past lives in you..." He trails off and shrugs. "It makes sense."

"You know about that?" Tarou asks.

"Yes, I told him," Kyoshi says, brushing her hair back. The wind tugs it out in front of her face again in a moment, and Kyoshi huffs at it in annoyance. She should cut it again.

When Tarou leaves for bed, Ming leans in to kiss her and Kyoshi leans over to meet him.

"Are you sure you can't stay longer?" Mother asks a couple of weeks later.

Kyoshi and Tarou shake their heads. "Gotta get back to duty," Tarou says.

"And I need to get started on mine," Kyoshi says.

"Thanks for letting me stay with you," Ming says.

They leave early, all of them used to rising with the sun. Kyoshi is already thinking of what to do next. She needs to take care of Chin the Conqueror, the Fire Nation and Northern Water Tribe are having disputes over who owns a set of islands on both of their borders, and the Southern Water Tribe claims that a trading ship of theirs has been sunk for no reason. But for now, there is just the road in front of her, her traveling companions, and the sun rising in the sky.

Notes: Tā is the Mandarin pronoun, which has different written forms that can differentiate sexes but is always pronounced the same. Tessen are Japanese war fans, and the art of their use is tessenjutsu. Sarashi are long strips of cloth that are wound around the torso, traditionally used by samurai to help protect from injury, and by women to bind their chests.

Kyoshi's name is written two different ways in the series: the statue of Kyoshi on Kyoshi island has 京士 on its fans, but the mural in 'Avatar Day' has 虚子. There actually is a male author who went by the pen name of Takahama Kyoshi, with the latter kanji.