In ten years the world will have changed

[fulselden]

In ten years the world will have changed

Written for the 31_days prompt "in ten years, the world will have changed."
Series: Avatar
Character: Avatar Kyoshi
Rating: G

Written almost solely because I hate it when immortal or miraculously long-lived women are randomly infertile in fiction. And the only books I can think of which buck this trend are Steph Swainson's 'The Year of our War' series. Depressing.

ETA: though apparently Kyoshi at least has one daughter in canon! So although that does not make for the kind of confusing generational shenanigans I'm envisaging here, still, ilu Avatar!

Avatar Kyoshi plugged her fingertips into the tacky red paste, brought them up trailing stiff little peaks of makeup. She did her eyes quickly, both at once, the push of her fingers on her eyelids stretching a brief network of light across her vision. It had been almost a century since she’d last needed to check her work in a mirror.

 

Outside, her daughter and great-grandchildren shouted over the pock and thump of earthball. She smiled, shifted a foot, listened as the children waited in vain for the ball to stop spinning above their heads.

 

“Grandma!”

They bounced around the foot of the veranda, dusty peasant brats like she herself had been, for all that her great-grandchildren’s father had been some uptight bureaucrat from Ba Sing Se with buffed nails and a long smooth face. Kyoshi shook her head. Things hadn’t worked out so badly once they’d got him out of the city, perhaps, but she’d never understood the appeal. The children bobbed impatiently, peering up into the soft brown gloom of the house. She brought a finger to her lips and waited. Misa, the oldest girl, was the first to catch on.

“Sorry, grandma!” She elbowed one of her sisters. “We were being loud again. Say sorry!”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry, mother.”

Kyoshi dropped her hand, inclined her head.

“Kyoshi earthbending isn’t just for the dojo, you know. Shout as much as you want, but I don’t want to hear lumps of earth banging around like a rockslide.”

She held up a finger.

“Precision.”

The children finished the rest.

“Subtlety. Stealth.”

“That’s right.” Kyoshi flapped her hands at them, let the ball settle to the ground. “Off with you!”

They scattered off into the evening, their sound of their game muffled now as the ball flew higher and higher in the yellowing air.

 

Kyoshi turned back into the powdery darkness of the house, snapped fingerfuls of fire at the lamps as she ducked through into the kitchen. Takashi was stooped over the table, shaping rice in salt-encrusted hands, the nape of his neck showing through his dark hair. He looked up, smiled.

 

“Giving them a hard time again?”

Kyoshi snorted, leant herself back against the door frame. Behind Takashi, a half-open screen door showed a slice of pine-dark hillside, fish drying on their racks, a white flagstone path curving away under the trees. The kitchen smelt of rice and sour plums. She knelt beside Takashi, lifted a finger to his neck.

“I’ve done this before, you know. A bit of discipline never does them any harm.”

He leant back into her hand, his hair brushing at her fingers, spatulate and calloused from decades of bending.

“I remember.”

Kyoshi remembered too, a solemn-eyed boy amongst the gaggles of children who’d gather to watch her whenever she came back to Kyoshi to train or heal, a still, silent young man on her next visit, a smile half-way to his lips as she put the warriors through their paces.

“They won’t have Aiko in Ba Sing Se, will they,” he said suddenly. “Your Dai Li, I mean. No matter how good she is.”

Kyoshi pursed her lips.

“No,” she said. “They won’t. Not yet. But she’ll be too good for them, anyway. Just like any daughter of mine, earthbender or no.”

Takashi brushed off his hands, sighed. Kyoshi looked down at him, paint creasing around her eyes.

“But, you know,” she said, “I should check up on them anyway. Show the two of you the big city. It’s worth a look.”

Takashi ducked his head, hiding a grin. His fingers, hot and mottled with salt, came up to cover hers.

“I think we’d both like that,” he said.


Kyoshi smiled, curved out an arm as she rose, feeling out the wind as it tilted around the island. She brought it in through the house, scuffing against pale paper screens, slipping over dark wood shiny with age and use, bringing with it the sharp scent of the sea. They stood together at the doorway like any couple moving together into middle age, looking out at the night thickening under the pines, a soft streak of red paint on the back of Takashi’s neck.