The day the group returned to the meadow was a sad one for Yaosen.

For the first time in a long time, the monk had to face the effects of his failure to master lightbending.

Upon seeing the scorched valley, the blackened earth, and the melted rock, images of a Fire Nation boy’s scarred face came flooding back.

“We should move on,” said Torun, “Nothing for us here anymore.”

“No,” said Yaosen, “This was as good a place as any to rest before. I don’t see why we should avoid it now.”

Duu looked from one man to the other. “You guys are crazy. I’m setting up over here where there’s still some earthrug left.”

Torun and Yaosen looked at each other, then said, “grass,” in unison.

While Torun, Duu, and Grunt lounged somewhere outside the blast radius, Yaosen picked through the remnants of another aborted life.

There was nothing of the cabin Yaosen had been so proud of building, except for the fused glassy obsidian that had once been the fieldstone hearth. The corral was indistinguishable from the rest of the blasted ground. Even the furnace built to withstand the intense heat required for purifying iron was shattered.

But Yaosen was used to having his ambition shattered. What he could not get used to – would not allow himself to get used to – was making others pay the price for his failures.

He wandered down to the stream’s edge that fed into the main river some hundred paces beyond the bend and found the two hunks of metal that once represented Torun’s honor.

“You can’t reforge it.”

Yaosen turned to see Torun standing behind him, holding a warped, wavering bar of meteorite metal that was once his sword. His duty. Yaosen couldn’t speak, only hang his head.

“We never even got the iron operation off the ground, and meteorite ore is far harder to work with,” Torun went on, “The temperatures are too great for some of the greatest smiths in the Fire Nation to control, and none of those smiths are on this continent.”

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Why did Torun feel the need to twist the knife?

“But,” said Torun, “Half the battle of reforging meteorite is making a fire that’s hot enough to melt it.”

Yaosen looked up at that, puzzled.

“You can’t think of this as a failure,” Torun said, hefting what was once his prized possession but now appeared to be no more than so much slag, “What you did against Lu Gun was nothing short of spectacular, do you understand? You made fire hot enough to melt meteorite, and you did it with nothing more than your own internal drive.”

“But… all our progress.”

“This rinky dink campsite? That wasn’t our progress. This,” Torun poked Yaosen in the chest, none too gently, “This is our progress.”

Yaosen’s face twisted in pain as he surveyed the scorched earth around them, “This meadow was a paradise before we came. I’m no different from the Earthbreakers.”

Duu had been digging through the ash but now wandered over. She pulled Yaosen down by the sleeve, and the monk tried not to rankle at the ashy fingerprints left on his gi.

The gi was ruined anyway by the many injuries Lu Gun had caused him and the hard work required to survive in the Farwilds. What right did he have to the pure white of the Light Temple anyway?

“Nature’s no stranger to fire,” Duu pushed aside a mound of ash to expose bright white shoots underneath. They had begun to turn yellow at the tips and would be bright green by the time they worked up through the new layer.

Duu scooped up handfuls of pure black ash and folded them into leaf pouches.

“Firesnow makes great rootsnack,” she explained.

Yaosen looked at Torun and said, “Ash.”

Torun nodded, “Fertilizer.”

“Come on,” said Torun, “Grunt’s had a good rest. It’s time we moved on.”

Duu nodded, “By the time we come back here, there will be a whole forest here. Better than ever.”

Yaosen stopped short at that as a thought formed. Or the seeds of one.

He looked from the blasted furnace, to the slag in Torun’s hand, to the melted clumps of meteorite ore that had once been the Meteor Knight’s armor.

“Are you just going to leave your honor by the roadside?” Yaosen asked.

Torun turned and shrugged, “Out here, it’s just metal.”

“You can still use it for battle. Just not in the way it expects to be used, and not in any battle it would recognize. Come on. You take that one, I’ll carry the other.”

Torun looked from Yaosen to the two metal clumps, then back to Yaosen, and finally said, “Hmph.”