FOREIGNER'S GOD; legend of korra

chapter two

[act one; chapter two     -     soul stains]

    Two figures stand alone on the docks, standing to greet them as they near. Like heartbeats echoing across the rippling water, tugging them nearer than what they've been in years now. Separated by distance and time, by differences and unspoken melodies. So much had changed, so much had wedged them apart. Like a crack in the earth.

    Suni is plagued by words unspoken. By the beat of her heart which she had hidden beneath armor and bloodied self-righteousness. A soldier is what she had fashioned of herself as a way to steel herself in the eyes of one of her only weak points. Of a soft spot, a tender point in her heel.

    Nothing had ever happened. No words had been spoken, and nothing had ever lingered so plainly between them. But as she casts her eyes to her sister, she is reminded of what stains her soul so precariously. Of what had once hung so delicately in the balance of all that she had been and would be.

    Love. That is what it had been. Plainly and truly. A delicate, gentle love written with ice and fire, one that had been cradled so carefully in the palms of its patrons. But it had been scorched, at some point, by the scarred palms of the fire-bearer. By her sister. By Aiya. Duty, to her, had always come first. It always would. For duty and responsibility were the pinnacle of what it meant to have honor, to be heir to a legacy of brutality turned to healing.

    Aiya had never been crafted so entirely out of steel before. In all of their years of life in tandem with the other, Suni had never quite witnessed such stubbornness, such anger, as she had when her sister stepped back from one of the few things that was capable of softening her. Of one of the people who could dip their fingers into her soul and come back without blood dripping from them.

    She follows her sister's eyes, cast upon the two figures on the dock. One is quite larger than the other, she sees. Tall and muscular, crafted similarly to his father. Dark hair tied meticulously into a bun, front sections of his hair resting against his jaw, clasped with white and blue stone ringlets. She can imagine the always present furrow of his brows, pulled tightly together. The wound tightness of his jaw and the twinging muscles of his temple. Arms crossed over his broad chest. Always so serious. So like Aiya.

    She feels the breath be stolen from her lungs as her eyes find the figure at his side. The one that is etched so dearly into her soul. Dark, cropped hair, buzzed delicately around his ears and nape. And from his hair comes a blue arrow, a symbol of all that he is, of the responsibility he, too, holds in the palms of his hands. The legacy he must carry forward as the second airbender born in the last century. He is only second to his uncle, Tenzin, yet carefully trained in the art of airbending. He is clothed, she realizes as they grow nearer and nearer, in a dark, rusted orange and varying shades of yellow and cream. She can even spot the slight ripple of lean muscle beneath his tight clothing as he adjusts his stance. As if preparing for them. For her.