damkianna: A cap of the Reverend Mother from the Dune miniseries, with accompanying text: "Space cowgirl." (Default)
'tis not so deep as a well ([personal profile] damkianna) wrote2011-03-26 05:43 pm

FIC POST - Of Shoes and Ships | Following One Another Softly

This requires a teeny bit of pre-fic explanation. The excellent [personal profile] alexseanchai bought fic from me for [community profile] help_japan, and gave me a prompt that my brain loved and cuddled and refused to spit out a single appropriate fic for. So! Here are two fics; one of them is more about Kyoshi and her history than the other, and one of them is more about Katara/Suki than the other, and together, they form Voltron something that approximates what [personal profile] alexseanchai actually asked for. :D Here's hoping you like at least one of these!

Title: Of Shoes and Ships
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: G? No violence, only a cheek kiss.
Characters/Pairing: Very light Katara/Suki.
Wordcount: Around 1600 words (LOOK LOOK I WROTE SHORT FIC!).
Summary: Katara and Suki set the canoe down outside Kyoshi's house; the dust had barely settled again before one of the warriors - Ayuko, maybe - came sprinting down the hill. Kind of a missing scene from the chapter The Warriors of Kyoshi, in Imagine the Ocean (Fic @ DW | Fic @ AO3).
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements: For [personal profile] alexseanchai, who bought these fics with a very kind donation to [community profile] help_japan, and gave me a really lovely prompt. ♥♥♥♥♥

Other Notes: The title is from Lewis Carroll - the line from the Walrus and the Carpenter that ends "-and sealing wax - of cabbages - and kings - and why the sea is boiling hot - and whether pigs have wings." I did haphazard (read: Wikipedia-level) research on Shinto shrines while writing this; if any mistakes or errors or offensive assumptions leap out at you, please do tell me so I can fix them!




Katara and Suki set the canoe down outside Kyoshi's house; the dust had barely settled again before one of the warriors - Ayuko, maybe - came sprinting down the hill. "It's settled," she said. "There will be a feast for you tonight in the village hall - if it pleases you, Avatar."

"Say yes," Sokka hissed, somewhat less than quietly.

"Of - of course," Katara said, "that would be - thank you."

The girl smiled and bowed, so deeply it made Katara's stomach swoop uncertainly, and turned to head back up the hill.

"Hey," Sokka said, hurrying after her, "hey, wait - feast? What kind of food? Will there be sweet-cakes?"

"Ooo, good question," Aang murmured.

"You can't even eat any of it!" Katara risked whispering.

His face settled into stubborn blue lines. "But I can still look at it," he said, and floated away after Sokka eagerly.

Katara bit back a laugh and shook her head, pulling the nearest pack of supplies from the canoe. She would probably get it done more easily without him, anyway; not that he wouldn't do his best to help, but he wasn't always very organized about unpacking, and Katara liked knowing where everything was. It would save some yelling later for her to do it by herself.

Another pack landed in the dirt by her foot. "I'd be happy to help," Suki said.

Not by herself, then - but Suki agreed, laughing, that she would put everything just where Katara told her to, and nowhere else.

*

Kyoshi's home was dim and cool inside. It did show signs of recent repair to one wall, but it was still easy to tell that no one had lived in it for a very long time - there was something odd and still about the air. It had been kept reasonably clean, dirt floor swept smooth and neat; and though the tables were old, they were in remarkably good condition.

"We are careful to keep them in their places," Suki said, when she caught Katara looking curiously at one with a plank that was clearly a replacement. "They do not often need repairing; but when they do, we mark where they should stand, so they can be put back correctly."

"It seems like an awful lot of work to go to," Katara observed. She didn't mean anything particular by it, except perhaps that it was a little daunting to see exactly how respected Kyoshi was, even now - how high the bar was that Katara would be measured by, how likely that she would be found wanting. But when she glanced back, Suki was looking at her with a peculiar expression. Not angry, quite; closer to puzzled.

"You don't know very much about her, do you?" Suki said.

"No," Katara admitted, because it was entirely true: she knew only as much as Gran-Gran had told her. When all the Earth Kingdoms had bent before the armies of Chin the Conqueror, Kyoshi had stood firm; to save the remaining free people of the south, she had cut the southern islands from the coast with a sweep of her fan, and Chin had tumbled from the cliff she had carved at his feet. But everyone knew that story. Granted, far fewer people had any idea what Kyoshi's voice had sounded like; but Katara wasn't going to bring up the dream she'd had if she could help it.

"You knew about her husband, though," Suki said. "And her daughter."

Katara bit her lip. "Not exactly," she said slowly. "It - wasn't really me who knew that. I mean, I know it now; but I didn't-" She shook her head; she was babbling. "Never mind."

Suki stared at her a moment longer, eyes narrowed curiously, and then she smiled. "Well, if we're done with your things, I think there's something you should see, Avatar."

*

The shrine to Kyoshi was high on the hill, behind the village hall and away up another slope; between the gate and the shrine, the path was paved and edged with stone, carefully maintained.

There was a small, open pavilion to the side, with a stone basin full of water and a wooden dipper. "The temizuya," Suki said, and sluiced some water through her fingers. She cupped a little to her mouth, too, before gesturing to Katara to do the same. "We don't have a priest like the big towns, but we still shouldn't go in completely uncleansed."

They had to pass between two statues - lion dogs, Katara was pretty sure, with a few artistic liberties - before they could climb the steps, and Suki paused halfway up. "I've got a little rice," she said, "but you need something, too - does that tree have any buds on it?"

It did, despite the scattering of snow on the ground - a relatively late snowfall, according to Suki, and the tree must have been budding early. They weren't precisely flowers yet, but Suki assured Katara that Kyoshi wasn't a particularly demanding spirit.

They bowed when they went in, and left their offerings on a low table by the door; when Katara straightened up, the first thing she saw was Kyoshi's headdress, right in the middle of the room.

"Beautiful, isn't it," Suki said, hushed and not quite a question; and all Katara could do was nod. In the most literal sense, it was nothing extraordinary - no more ornate than the headdress Suki was wearing on her own forehead - but there was a weight and age and presence to it that made Katara feel like she ought to be shielding her eyes.

And the headdress wasn't alone: there were easily a dozen relics in the shrine, all carefully placed and faithfully preserved. There was a large vase to the side, glaze crackled with age, and behind it, a table with what had to be Kyoshi's fighting fans, propped up on stands and spread wide. There was a chest and a mat on the other side of the room, and the whole back wall of the place was covered with a massive painting; and at Katara's right hand, Kyoshi's robes hung on the wall, her boots before them.

"... Her feet were huge," Katara said, peering down at them; and Suki laughed.

"They were," she agreed. "She was a very big woman. She had the largest feet any Avatar ever had, many people say; and it is a lucky thing on this island, now, to bear a girl with big feet." She laughed again, and then tugged on Katara's wrist. "Come on, come look."

She led Katara to the back of the room, where the painting hung; and Katara recognized the shrine in the middle immediately. It was the same one they were standing in, though in the painting the roof was thatched rather than tiled, and the path had not yet been laid down in stone.

But it was not the focus of the painting - a crowd of islanders stood in front of the shrine, wearing blue without a hint of white, and Kyoshi stood before them, one hand upraised, a fan spread in the other. Her face, in profile, was calm and knowing and perfect; she looked exactly the way the Avatar ought to look, and something in Katara's chest turned heavy.

"It was done as part of the commemoration, a year after she broke the islands free," Suki said. "They say the painter did it with her eyes closed; she remembered it so vividly that she didn't have to look to guide her brush."

Katara turned to look at her; Suki was gazing at the painting almost rapturously, the war-paint she was still wearing striking in the dim light, and she looked inspired, strong, like she had never felt uncertain for a moment in her life. You'd be a better Avatar than I ever will, Katara thought, and she only realized she'd said it out loud when Suki swung her head around and gave her an incredulous look.

"I think you do yourself a disservice, Avatar," she said after a moment, gentle. "Kyoshi had nothing you do not also have. Yes, she broke a continent and wielded ancient elemental power and lived to be two hundred and thirty. But behind all that, she was just-" Suki gestured a little. "A person. A woman with sharp fans and big feet. She saw what needed to be done, and when no one else would, she did it." She paused and just looked at Katara, painted mouth curving, and her eyes were bright; she curled a warm hand around Katara's shoulder. "I've only known you for half an hour, and I already trust you to do the same thing."

It meant more to Katara than she had expected, to hear Suki say it; it turned the heavy thing in her chest to smoke, and before she could talk herself out of it, she leaned sideways and up and pressed a very tiny kiss to Suki's cheek. The paint was smooth against her mouth, not like skin; but she thought maybe she could feel the warmth of Suki's face, somewhere underneath it.

She probably should have apologized for it, but she couldn't find the words; she kept her eyes on the painting, and a moment later Suki reached over and took her hand.

There, see, she's not angry, Katara told herself, and made herself look: Suki was smiling at her, nothing but pleased, and her fingers were warm against Katara's. "Come on," she said, "a little behind the shrine is my favorite place to look at the ocean," and she tugged Katara away from the painting, out and down the steps, into the sunshine.




Title: Following One Another Softly
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: G? No violence, only a teeny bit of macking.
Characters/Pairing: Katara/Suki.
Wordcount: About 1500 words (LOOK THIS ONE'S EVEN SHORTER \o/).
Summary: It still happened all the time, just the way it had before, other people's lives suddenly in Katara's mind; but she was free to linger over it, now that no one would die if she were too slow. Timestamp fic, a year or so after as-yet-unwritten Book Four in the Imagine the Ocean 'verse (Fic @ DW | Fic @ AO3).
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements: For [personal profile] alexseanchai, who bought these fics with a very kind donation to [community profile] help_japan, and gave me a really lovely prompt. ♥♥♥♥♥

Other Notes: The title of this one is from (I think) the book Anne of Avonlea: "'I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.'" For this one, I spent a little time on the A:tLA wiki, and a lot of time looking at caps of Kyoshi Island.




It still happened all the time, just the way it had before, other people's lives suddenly in Katara's mind; but she was free to linger over it, now that no one would die if she were too slow. She could take her time and feel what it was to be another person, if only for a little while.

It was Kyoshi, as it often was now that they were back on the island, and Katara looked through her eyes and smiled to see the children who played in the dirt outside. Itoro, and Gai, and little Mizuka; three of Koko's many great-grandchildren. Kyoshi would have killed a dozen conquerors to keep from having to watch her own daughter die of old age, but she had found some comfort even in the darkness: almost alone among mothers, she knew without a doubt that her child had passed without pain, after a long and pleasant life.

Etsuko came in, arms full of damp clothing fresh from the stream, humming as she walked; she said something, voice pleasant and a little teasing, and though Katara couldn't quite hear it, Kyoshi tossed her head back and laughed. It was a warm day, the sunlight gold where it slanted through the open shutters, and there were clothes to be hung, out where the sweet breeze off the bay would dry them. Not a day to dwell on old pain, Kyoshi thought, and she touched her granddaughter's hand and smiled.

When Katara's eyes cleared, she was looking at the exact same room, and for a moment she thought the vision hadn't quite faded; but the floor before her was faintly dusty, no footprints but her own in the dirt, and the shutters were closed.

They stayed that way for only a moment: there was a scraping sound, the creak of old wood protesting, and then one pair swung open, dust swirling in the light. Suki, outside, beamed at them approvingly - and then yanked her hand clear as the left shutter groaned and cracked off at the hinges, landing with a muffled thud on the grass outside.

"Well, at least one of them is still good," Suki said, after a moment.

Katara grinned. "Just to be safe," she said, "we'd better replace them both, don't you think?"

"As you say, Avatar," Suki said, and bowed low, the gesture given the lie by the grin on her face.

"Oh, stop," Katara said, laughing, and then stepped forward to run a hand gently over the sill; she only meant it to be casual, to remind herself that it really was her windowsill now, but when she looked up, Suki was giving her a narrow-eyed look.

"It happened again, didn't it," she said.

Katara tapped her fingers on the windowsill, sheepish. Somehow, Suki always knew. "For a minute," she said. "Kyoshi again. It was - nice." She turned to look at the room behind her. It was dark and quiet now, dusty in the halfhearted way of a room that was cleaned but not lived in; but it hadn't always been, and it wouldn't stay that way, not now that they were here.

Oyaji had been glad to let them have the house; and even if he hadn't been, in some sense it was Katara's house, the same way everything that had been Kyoshi's was a little bit Katara's.

"You will stay here with me, won't you?" she said, a little nervously. In all the long weeks of traveling, and in the days since they had arrived, she hadn't exactly asked - only assumed; and Suki hadn't contradicted her yet, but that wasn't the same thing as agreeing.

Katara was ready with a host of arguments - Kyoshi's house was closer to the training hall than Suki's family lived, and closer to the bay, which could be essential if the pirates had stuck around. But she didn't need them; Suki only smiled, and said, "Yes. Now give me a minute to find something to pry these hinges off with."

*

They ended up replacing all the shutters - almost half of them had some degree of visible rot, and Katara wasn't willing to bet on the other half. They put the new ones together themselves, and painted them, Earth Kingdom green and Water Tribe blue and war-paint white; when they were finished, the house looked a little ridiculous, but it was distinctly theirs. Katara found flecks of paint in her hair for days.

It rained the second week, which was how they discovered a tiny leak in the corner. It was small enough that nobody coming through a week later to clean would have seen it, which was how it had managed to go unrepaired for so long. Suki spent the next day on the roof, catching the bundles of shingles Katara Airbent up to her, prying the old ones out and slotting the new ones in.

People talked; of course they did, with the new Avatar living in the old Avatar's house, settling into a place that had been empty for nearly two hundred years. But nobody was rude, nobody was cruel. Ayuko's mother did their sewing for them after Katara healed the slow creeping ache of her fingers; and Suki's parents helped them lay down the beginnings of a garden.

Katara worried sometimes that she only loved living there so much because Kyoshi had; and maybe that was part of it, but there was another reason, one she didn't figure out until the day Mikari stopped her by the training hall to contribute a handful of seeds. "They'll grow lovely flowers," she told Katara, pressing them into her hand. "Suki will love them," and she grinned knowingly, like they were sharing a secret.

Katara flushed hot all the way up her ears, staring down at the little dark seeds in her hand and imagining Suki's face as she beamed down at a flower - a flower, any flower, it didn't matter what kind, because, she realized slowly, the flower wasn't what Katara would be looking at.

She took the seeds with a mumble of thanks, and stared at them nearly all evening to keep herself from staring at Suki instead; she had never been so aware of the sparse length of dirt floor between the mats they slept on.

It was fall, so she didn't plant Mikari's seeds; she wrapped them up and tucked them away, and tried not to think about them too much.

Winter on Kyoshi Island was long and dim and snowy. It was nothing compared to the winters Katara remembered from her childhood, where midwinter was a month-long night, but she had been traveling warmer lands for so long she had almost managed to forget what it was like to be cold. The village passed the worst of it with everyone gathered in the common hall; Katara told the children stories while blizzards howled outside, and tried to stop blushing every time Suki touched her.

*

At long last, though, it became warm again, and soon it was almost time to travel up to Kyoshi's shrine, to repair whatever had been broken by wind and heavy snow. Another day or two, Katara thought, and tipped her head back until the sun fell full on her face. And then it would be time to see what they could do with the garden.

"Look," Suki said, and Katara could hear the smile in her voice even before she forced her head back up and opened her eyes. "Those seeds you've been saving - look."

Suki was barefaced, she hardly wore her paint now except to practice, and she had the seeds nestled in her cupped hands; at least half of them had split open, and there were pale green shoots curling out, unfurling, searching for light. She leaned a little closer, hands dipping into the pool of sunlight coming through the window, and Katara reached out to touch one and ended up with her fingers splayed over Suki's wrist instead.

She had kept it tucked close all through the long winter, this thing that made her chest clench and her cheeks warm at all the wrong moments; and she looked at the seeds sprouting in Suki's hands and the look on Suki's face and couldn't keep it in anymore. "They're beautiful," she said, very quietly, and tipped herself forward until she could press a kiss to Suki's mouth.

She let herself linger, and then backed away; and Suki stared at her, frozen for a moment until she sucked in a breath and then let it out in a rush. "I thought you might - but then you never - I thought you'd changed your mind," she said, barely over a whisper.

Katara blinked, a sudden giddy rush sweeping through her chest, and then laughed breathlessly. "I guess I hadn't made it up yet," she said, a little apologetic, and stroked one of the shoots carefully with the side of her finger.

"Well, come on," Suki said, smiling. "We have things to plant."



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