Kyoshi 3

“Kyoshi next!” someone said. “She’s never here, so let’s make the most of it!”

Kyoshi was caught off guard. Normally she wasn’t included in household antics. She caught Kelsang’s eye and saw the challenge twinkling there. Fun, eh? Prove it.

Before she could stop herself, the rhythm launched her into song.

“I’ve got two knives that are cast in bronze / they pierce all the way to the soul / they draw you in with the promise of sin / like the moth to the flame to the coal.”

The kitchen howled. Auntie Mui clucked in disapproval. “Keep going, you naughty girl!” Lee shouted, glad that the attention was off him.

She’d even managed to throw off Kelsang, who looked at her curiously, as if he had a spark of recognition for whom she was describing. Kyoshi knew that wasn’t possible when she was simply tossing out the first words that came to her head. She thumped a length of dough onto the table in front of her, creating her own percussion.

“I’ve got hair like the starless night / it sticks to my lips when I smile / I’ll wind it with yours and we’ll drift off course / in a ship touching hearts all the while.”

Somehow the improvisation was easy, though she’d never considered herself a poet. Or a bawdy mind, for that matter. It was as if another person, someone much more at ease with their own desires, was feeding her the right lines to express herself. And to her surprise, she liked how the inelegant lines made her feel. Truthful and silly and raw.

“For the way I walk is a lantern lit / that leads you into the night / I’ll hold you close and love you the most / until our end is in sight.”

Kyoshi didn’t have time to ponder the darker turn her verse took before a sudden pain shot through her wrist.

Kelsang had grabbed her arm and was staring at her, eyes wild and white. His grip squeezed tighter and tighter, crushing her flesh, his nails drawing blood from both her skin and his.

...

“So you think I’m the Avatar because of a stupid song I made up?” she said. Somewhere between the study and her room she’d found enough backbone to say it out loud.

“I think you might be the Avatar because you pulled from thin air the exact lines of a poem Kuruk wrote a long time ago,” Kelsang said.

-RoK, Honest Work & Revelations