The forest was unlike anything Yaosen had ever seen before. Whereas the Light Temple, and indeed most of the Fire Nation itself, had been all grand buildings, orderly streets, and perfectly manicured gardens, here, every tree, boulder and patch of moss seemed to be battling for space.
A stream cut through a bank, washing it away, even as moss clung to the edges to hold the loam in place. The roots of a pine tree gripped a boulder, growing around it even as its trunk bent and twisted around the implacable face of another rock. It was all so wild and reckless, yet somehow it all seemed to be in the proper place.
Perhaps the masters of the Light Temple would be able to make sense of it. They did seem to always have an answer. Yet Yaosen got the sense that lightbending existed on the other end of the spectrum from whatever this was.
These were the Farwilds. And lightbending was the opposite of wild.
But here he was on the wrong side of the world, trying to master the most refined form of firebending, when what he should be doing was learning to make a simple campfire.
Torun’s huffing beside him pulled Yaosen out of his reverie.
“I don’t understand why you won’t just leave it,” said Yaosen, “You’ll only need the sword.”
Torun gave him a dangerous look, and for a moment Yaosen thought that was the only response he would receive. Then Torun said, “My sword is my duty. But the armor is my honor. I would no sooner leave my armor by the roadside than I would cast it off and flee for my life in battle.”
It was a struggle to keep from snorting. But Yaosen had spent his entire life hearing such things from lightbending masters and scholar monks, and he had learned to keep his reactions in check. Mostly.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” said Yaosen, “There is no roadside, because there is no road. There are no villages or cities, or nations that we’ve found. We’ve been lied to. We’re not here on a quest to find the avatar. We’re here because we were inconvenient.”
“Is that right?”
“It is. For there to be an avatar there needs to be benders,” Yaosen went on as if the Meteor Knight were an acolyte, “For there to be benders, there needs to be people. We’ve been out here for hours and not a single sign of humanity.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Torun, shouldering past.
Yaosen puzzled at that, then fell back into step, “Have you… seen something I haven't? You have, haven’t you? Tell me.”
“No, I haven't seen anything that you haven't. I have something that you don’t. Resolve. We’ve been here three days. Do you know how long it took the exiled prince to find the avatar the last time he went missing?”
Of course Yaosen knew, “Do you mean the first sighting or-”
“Longer than three days,” snapped Torun, “So grow a spine.”
Yaosen did snort at that. “You sound like an earthbender.”
Torun whirled on Yaosen, eyes narrowing on the monk. Yaosen had replaced the leather grip of the knife before returning it to its owner, but the Meteor Knight was trying to decide how much Yaosen had found out about the dagger, or perhaps how much the lightbending monk had surmised.
“I’m no bender,” said Torun, finally. That caught Yaosen off guard. Did Torun sound almost proud to admit it? Torun adjusted his pack and walked on.
Suddenly Yaosen felt guilty that all he carried was the shirt on his back. He felt guilty that he was so far out of his element out here. Suddenly his pride at being one of the most advanced firebenders in the world, too, turned to guilt at not being able to use that for anything useful in their current environment. All of his accomplishments in the civilized world meant nothing in the Farwilds.
With an effort, Yaosen stifled his pride, and stoked his pragmatism.
“You’re right, Torun Bo. You’re no bender. But it turns out… I have much to learn from you. If you will teach me.”
“What could I teach you?”
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“Well let's start with what we need. We need shelter and warmth, food and water, medicine and safety, and then after that, we can start thinking about what we want out of this place.”
“There is no want and need,” said Torun, “There is only the mission assigned to me by my Fire Lord and the steps required to accomplish that.”
“Right. And your mission is to keep me alive-”
“My mission is to see that you find the avatar or die trying. There’s some latitude there.”
Yaosen’s eyes narrowed on the Meteor Knight as they scaled a boulder and continued inland. It seemed that “inland” also meant “uphill,” and soon even Yaosen was getting sore, unencumbered as he was.
“I don’t believe you,” Yaosen said between grunts of exertion.
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“Your duty is to follow the letter of those orders. But your honor demands that you follow the spirit of them. If you don’t make every attempt to keep me alive so that I can find the next avatar – however remote a possibility that may be out here – then you might as well drop that armor now.”
Torun said nothing.
Yaosen took that as a good sign, “So I was able to make some rudimentary shelters, but warmth is still an issue. Especially if we’re gaining elevation.”
Torun grunted and Yaosen took that as a very good sign.
“So it would behoove both of us if you taught me how to make a campfire.”
Torun snorted, “You know how to make a campfire.”
“I… copied you.”
Torun shrugged, “So you know how to make a campfire.”
“But I don’t know why the campfire needs to be made that way.”
“Aren’t you a firebender? Haven’t you studied firebending your entire life?”
Yaosen held a hand aloft, summoning a rudimentary flame. He made it burn faster and slower with a gesture, taller and wider, rolled it from palm to palm, made it burn red, orange, then a pure white. He made it the size of a candle, then roar in a pillar to the very treetops. “I’ve studied every conceivable way to summon a flame, manipulate it, fight with it. But it seemed there was a… blind spot in the tutelage of the Light Temple. We studied the nature of firebending. But the nature of fire itself, how it occurs naturally…”
Yaosen let the flame die on his hand. Torun didn’t respond, even as they trudged another few miles through needle-strewn forest and boulder-clad hill. So Yaosen let the request die along with it.
When they stopped to rest, Torun disappeared into the woods for a few moments. He came back with three pieces of wood, and began preparing a campfire just as he had done that first day.
“The wood you chose was too old,” said Torun cutting a log in two to expose the clean center.
Yaosen, realizing that this was a start of a lesson – his request granted – scrambled into the lotus position to watch Torun work.
“Under the right conditions,” the Meteor Knight went on, “wood breaks down quickly, returning to the earth, starting with the part that’s touching the ground.”
“Earth and fire are neutral toward one another,” Yaosen agreed, citing basic firebending dogma, “A stalemate if you will.”
“And the bark holds water for much longer than the wood itself. You need to strip the bark to let it dry.” Torun demonstrated as he spoke.
“Fire can only exist in the absence of water,” Yaosen nodded. These were elementary principles, concepts you had to master prior to even the Light Temple entrance exam. It seemed so obvious once you understood how the log itself was the battleground between the four basic elements.
“But I stacked clean, dry wood in the fire and it didn’t ignite until I did it as you had done.” Yaosen ventured.
“You probably smothered it.”
Yaosen thought on that for a moment. He ignited the stacked wood with a flick then watched how the flames licked around the log in the negative space, how it picked up then threatened to extinguish as the wind whistled through the pines.
“For fire to exist, air must be in balance? Three elements expressed in the fourth: one neutral, one opposing, one supporting!” Yaosen looked to the gruff knight with his sword and ridiculously large pack, “Torun, you may not have been born a bender, but you were born with the mind of one.”
Torun leaned back and shut his eyes, “Kid, I just told you how to make a campfire. Whatever deeper meaning you take from it is monk business.”
They slept where they had settled that night, knowing this wet, windy, uneven stretch of forest to be only a temporary resting place. But Yaosen was so excited after the day’s discoveries, that it was a long time before he settled down.
He played with the flame, fanning them alongside the gusts of wind, stretching them to rotten or wet sections of the log, testing the limits of the theories Torun had exposed to him.
Yaosen had spent so much time trying to master lightbending, that he had almost forgotten the joy of controlling a more primal element. He hadn’t been this enamored with simple firebending since he was a boy. That was before he had even been sent to the temple.
His world came crashing back to him, and suddenly he was very tired. He relinquished his hold on the flames, and lay down in a crook of root and pine needles.
There was no avatar here. This was no sacred mission from their Fire Lord. They were exiles for their crimes of incompetence; Torun Bo for being a master at his craft for too long, and Yaosen for not having mastered his craft quickly enough.
The darkness seemed to press in on them from all sides, and Yaosen could feel just how alone he was on this continent.
But as he closed his eyes, all was not dark. There was a spark. It was not a beam of pure, unfiltered, focused light, but it was something. Avatar or not, there was something to be gained from these Farwilds.
Yoasen vowed, in the space between sleep and wakefulness, that he would master what this land had to teach him, whether it be lightbending, wildfire, or some other, dark unknown.