“Do you think it followed us for some reason,” asked Yaosen, “Or was it coincidence?”

They didn’t talk much as they carried the canoe, their heavy breaths echoing in the rooty hull as Yaosen and Torun held it over their heads. The only way they kept on the path was by following Duu’s footsteps just ahead of them.

“He followed us,” Duu said after a while, “The trail would be bigger if this was part of his normal route. He barely fit on it.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Yaosen.

“You didn’t see his ironvines?”

“Ironvines?” Yaosen echoed to Torun, in the back.

“Chains,” said Torun.

“No, I… had forgotten about them,” answered Yaosen.

“They were bleeding,” said Duu in the same tone she used when talking about cutting down trees.

“Well I don’t know what we can do about that. None of us can metalbend.”

“What about your lightbending?” asked Duu, “Can’t that cut through metal? It looked like it was able to cut through just about everything else.”

“Lightbending is very dangerous,” said Yaosen, remembering another child who had watched him lightbend and the terrible price that Light Temple acolyte had paid for Yaosen’s failure, “Besides I don’t think a wild animal would be too happy about a hot beam so close to it. It's about as likely that I blow us up as the bearmoose tramples us.”

Duu was quiet for a while after that.

In the silence, Yaosen was forced to consider the risk Torun had taken to save Grunt, and how they had earned a loyal companion and a new friend in return. But Torun had taken those steps to save a life. Even as Yaosen followed that thought to its conclusion, he knew that if the chains remained on the bearmoose, its wounds would eventually fester and the bearmoose would die.

It was terribly unfair that Lu Gun had used and abused the poor beast, just to distract Yaosen. Yaosen didn’t quite blame himself as Torun did with Grunt’s injury, but the monk couldn’t help but think that the Farwilds would have been better off if he had died in the Fire Lord’s throne room.

Finally Yaosen spoke, “If it comes back, and if I we figure out a way to make him let me, I will try it.”

“Really?!” Duu was ecstatic, “I think I have a special powder-

“You must promise you will not put yourself in any danger, Duu.”

“Just leave it to me,” said Duu. Yaosen could hear the smile in her voice, and knew he had given the right answer.

***

Right answer or not, Yaosen’s misgiving started as soon as they reached the top of the rapids. It was a local peak, perhaps halfway between where the river forked and where the mountain range got so high, snow covered almost everything in the distance. They still had much farther to go to reach the river’s source, and much higher to climb.

Even so, Yaosen could see all the land they had traveled thus far. He could see the peak he and Torun had first ascended to get their first lay of the land.

From there he could see the mountainous forests that had once been Grunt’s home, and the scorched swathe of meadow that had once seemed like it would be Yaosen’s new home. Duu’s hollow too would be in one of the oak forest valleys, not too far away, but from here Yaosen couldn’t pick out which one.

He traced the river as far back as he could. The mouth of the river was far too distant from here, thus the new earth kingdom city was blocked from view. But he could still feel it, emanating imbalance.

It wasn’t just a spiritual blight on the Farwilds. Yaosen could see raised roads, cleared forests, even the beginnings of mines. Quarries and tilled earth farms would be everywhere around that new earth kingdom now. But it might be a while before the few rare metalbenders got to working on making metal as common here as it was in the Four Kingdoms and Republic City.

Even so, the new Earth Kingdom was growing fast and it wouldn’t be long before everything they had traveled thus far would become enemy territory.

But what worried Yaosen most, was the thin, intermittent line of a road, stretching from their old meadow out toward the badlands.

The Earthbreakers had been moving in force, else they wouldn’t have bothered raising such a road. Yaosen had no doubt that an organized Earthbreaker troop would be able to fight off the mangy pack of creepers that had blocked the badlands from Yaosen’s own group.

And if Lu Gun was alive and leading the band of Earthbreakers, there was no question that he would bend the horde of creepers to his will.

The Earthbreakers were taking the more direct path, by virtue of greater numbers and arms, and if their goals were the same, the Earth Kingdom elites might end up ahead of them, when the rivers rejoined.

“We can’t afford any more delays,” said Yaosen to Torun, who had settled beside him, also taking a lay of the land.

“Hmph,” said Torun, and for the first time in a long time, that grunt was unreadable. Was this the pragmatic Torun, that put their survival first? It was Torun’s official mission from his Fire Lord, after all, to keep Yaosen safe at least. Or was this the honor-bound Torun, who put the spirit of their mission ahead of its letter? They were tasked with surviving long enough to find the firebending avatar, yes. But in the absence of the avatar, could they afford to let things fall so out of balance that even an avatar couldn’t set them right? If they couldn’t even help a bearmoose, injured by an Earthbreaker assassin, what hope did they have of helping the Farwilds, the avatar, and the whole world?

“It’s ready!” said Duu. She was sprinkling one last packet of some powdered herb onto a large pile of salmonsturgeon, caught from the pools that collected here, above the rapids.

Yaosen nodded. He wasn’t sure which he dreaded more: waiting for the bearmoose and giving up precious miles to the Earthbreakers, or trying to lightbend the chains off a thousand pound beast that had once tried to kill him.

Needless to say, when they set their little campfire up at the bank of the river, a little ways from the pile of fish, Yaosen was not able to find rest.

***

It was dawn again by the time the bearmoose found them, and Yaosen was the first to spot it, lumbering up the final slope toward the pile of fresh fish. The creature was limping badly by this point, the iron bands that held the rattling remnants of chains digging deep into its paws.

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The poor animal didn’t understand that the more it worried at them the worse it would get. Nothing in nature was so complete, so perfectly binding, as the metal chains made by man.

Yaosen said nothing to the group who slumbered nearby. Torun had fallen asleep just after sunset, as he was wont to do. And – barring a life or death situation – he would not wake until sunrise. Yaosen envied his commitment to his sleeping cycle. Duu, for her part, could fall asleep anywhere at any time, and Yaosen envied her unburdened mind.

Yaosen huddled in his gi, a light garment meant to maintain a certain scholarly aesthetic rather than actually provide warmth. As he watched the bearmoose gorge itself on salmon and the herbs Duu had sprinkled on them, he longed for the days when Torun had hunted every day, and they had built up a nice collection of furs for tanning.

Of course, both the bow and their accrued supplies had been incinerated in the fight with Lu Gun. They had lost everything, and had to restart the hard work of survival, but they at least had a clean slate, thanks in large part to Duu’s healing.

The bearmoose still carried the wounds of that fight. That bearmoose had been punished for nothing more than being big, dangerous, and having the ill luck of crossing paths with the Earthbreaker assassin.

The bearmoose lumbered toward Yaosen and the monk’s chilly musings turned to boiling fear. Yaosen didn’t so much as twitch. But the bearmoose simply laid down beside him again, close enough that the hot breath from its snout misted against Yaosen’s feet. Its remaining antler curled around one side of Yaosen, a wall of scored ivory bobbing in time with its slumbering breaths.

Why? Yaosen asked himself. Why do you follow us and seek out our camp? We were enemies. I hurt you.

Yaosen slowly slid away from the bearmoose and tapped Duu. She was groggy, but when she noticed the mountain of fur and muscle blocking one side of their camp, her eyes lit with… excitement.

“It worked!” Duu whispered.

“I hope so,” said Yaosen, “because if it didn’t, talking would be very ill-advised.”

Duu and Yaosen looked at each other for a moment, then back to the bear, who still slept.

“Is it enough?” Yaosen asked.

“I gave it all the sleepleaf I had. But you’d better not waste any time.”

“Ok. Wake up Torun and Grunt, and take them far away. Preferably across the river.”

“But-”

“If you’re not out of harm’s way, I won’t do it. Lightbending alone is very dangerous. Lightbending at a sleeping bearmoose…”

Duu took his meaning and quietly woke up the rest of the camp.

“Oh, and Duu…”

Duu paused.

“How deep is the sleep?”

Duu looked puzzled.

“Can he feel heat? Pain? If the beam of light isn’t perfect…”

“I would try to avoid touching him,” said Duu, catching Yaosen’s meaning.

Yaosen nodded. Great. Just have to be perfect.

They took the canoe across the river, Torun grumbling all the way about “the proper amount of rest for a warrior.” When they paused to disembark, Yaosen waved them further away. By the time the Light Templ monk settled down to focus on his work, he could barely see his distant companions in the slanting light of dawn.

“I suppose it's a good thing, that I’ll die if I mess this up,” Yaosen said, not even bothering to whisper anymore, but maintaining a calm voice, “My best lightbending always seems to happen when my life is on the line.”

The bearmoose merely continued snoring in response.

Yaosen settled into a meditative posture, closing his eyes to tap his willpower then find his focus. If he could form the beam, the rest would be easy. If he couldn’t form the beam… well, there’d be a new scorch mark on the Farwilds where a monk and a bearmoose used to be.

He found his mind wandering to the vision of the spirit fish: one red-striped salmonsturgeon, one silver-blue. They circled and battled and spun around one another in what seemed like a perversion of the koi of the Northern Water Tribe.

Yaosen stoked his willpower deep in his gut, feeling the flames burn hot within him, ready for release should he want to perform a traditional firebending technique.

He held it there, though, as he found his mental focus.

There was Noro, the boy he had injured in his first lightbending attempt. There was the match Lu Gun had held, cut from his hand with a perfect beam of light that had saved their lives. There was the metal coffin he had half-cut, half-blasted his way out of. Then the several other failed attempts, the latest of which had incinerated their home.

It seemed the further he got from his old life, the worse his lightbending became.

The blue and red fish sped down the river and rammed into each other, half turning, half-spinning, for a brief moment assuming the same positions as the spirit koi of the east.

The mountain spirit had said that Yaosen was like a forest recently cut down. He would grow back stronger, but while he was new to the ways of the wild, he would be weaker. The forest spirit, Duu’s grandfather, had said that to move a tree, you need to break and heal at the same time.

He tried to reconcile those spirits with the ones he knew from the east. The spirit koi circling one another, perfectly in balance for as long as they were visible in the mortal world. Ran and Shaw, the last red dragon and the last blue dragon, not spirits per se, but rumored to be beings of both worlds; the pair always moved in perfect synchronicity.

But for these river spirits of the west there was only a moment when they seemed in balance. The rest of the time was chaos.

Yaosen then realized what they were trying to tell him, or rather, what he could learn by watching them.

He formed the focus and opened his eyes only long enough to find the first band on the bearmoose’s wrist.

He released the fire within him through that mental focus.

It didn’t form a beam. It was more of a flash. And then he closed himself again, cutting the light off.

He moved to the next metal band, envisioning those koi moving up and downriver and then slicing back to ram into each other once more. In the moment they rebounded, twisting in the swirl of water around one another, Yaosen released the fire again. Another flash and then he closed off the power.

The salmonsturgeon swam away and then charged again, and Yaosen chose the perfect moment to release a flash of light once more, twice more.

And then he quelled the fire within him, finally letting the mental focus slip.

He opened his eyes to find the bearmoose awake, looking at him with deep, dark eyes set in a head that was nearly as big as Yaosen himself was. Its one remaining antler was as long as he was tall, and perhaps heavier.

In that moment, in the wake of holding both fire and focus so closely, Yaosen felt no fear. He watched the bearmoose as it watched him. He bent to the first cuff on its forepaw, a line of heat still glowing on it. He took it, gingerly to avoid the wounds. With a quick jerk the metal bond snapped away.

The bearmoose lept up and Yaosen fell back, thinking his life was over.

But the bearmoose did a brief circle of a sprint around the clearing, falling to the ground to lick its free paw intermittently. The ground shook with each of its bounds and tumbles.

Yaosen got to his knees and waited. The bear did two more turns around the riverbank before noticing the cuff still on its other forepaw. It lumbered back toward him and lay down, head upon the ground and forepaw out to one side of Yaosen. Its head was so big, its eyes were level with Yaosen’s even though the beast pressed itself flat to the earth like an enormous rug.

“The secret,” said Yaosen, in what he hoped was a soothing, meditative voice, “Is time.”

He jerked the next cuff apart, and again the enormous beast launched itself around the clearing in what Yaosen now recognized as a celebration of sorts. It was so happy to have two of the cuffs off, that it couldn’t contain itself.

“Come on,” said Yaosen, “two more.”

The bearmoose zoomed around the clearing once more, then calmed itself for long enough to lie before the monk.

Yaosen rose and circled to a back paw.

“Some things are in perfect balance every minute of the day.”

He snapped another heated cuff and the bear did one quick zoom before returning.

“Some things are in balance for only a moment.” He snapped the last cuff.

The bear sprinted and bucked and tumbled and licked, and Yaosen returned to his meditative posture while the bear enjoyed itself.

“There are perfect things, and there are perfect moments. A cycle, a progression, is a type of balance, no greater and no less than a continuous balance.” Yaosen maintained his calm demeanor, letting the bearmoose associate his voice with the joy of freedom. Finally the beast bounded off through the trees.

“Wow that’s pretty good,” he said to himself, “I’ll have to remember that for my next lesson with Duu.”