Tashi
The thin mountain air of the Southern Air Temple was always cold before dawn, the kind of chill that seeped directly into a man's bones if he stood still for too long. In the quiet dark of his quarters, Tashi blew gently on the embers of his small brazier, coaxing a flame to life beneath a clay kettle.
He favored a blend of fermented leaves smuggled from the Earth Kingdom's eastern valleys—dark, earthy, and grounding.
As the water began to simmer, Tashi stepped over to the high, arched window of his room. The opening had no glass, true to the Air Nomads' desire to live completely unseparated from the sky. Outside, the jagged peaks of the Patola mountain range were silhouettes against a bruised violet sky. Below, the sprawling white stone plazas and cascading towers of the temple slept in serene, blissful ignorance.
He poured the steaming water over the leaves, watching them unfurl in the dark clay cup. The first breath of steam hit his face, carrying the rich, bitter scent of the earth. He took his first cautious sip. The heat bloomed in his chest, but it did nothing to ease the cold knot tightening in his stomach.
To the monks, the world was exactly as it had been for centuries. Avatar Roku was alive, the seasons turned, and the four nations existed in spiritual harmony. But the messages Tashi had received over the last few years through the Order's hidden networks painted a terrifyingly different picture.
He took another slow sip, the tea bitter on his tongue. He thought of the coded letter hidden beneath the false bottom of his Pai Sho box—a dispatch from a Lotus brother stationed in the Fire Nation capital.
Sozin is hoarding iron, the report had whispered. The shipyards in the west are burning coal day and night. They aren't building merchant vessels. They are building warships clad in metal.
Tashi leaned against the stone frame of the window, the morning breeze fluttering the edges of his orange robes. His mind drifted across the ocean to the Earth Kingdom, where another White Lotus scholar had noted an influx of Fire Nation 'traders' map-making the rocky coastlines and measuring the depths of neutral harbors.
It did not take them too many guesses to know what those 'traders' were doing.
And then there was Roku. The grand, elderly Avatar, isolated on his volcanic island, stubbornly believing his childhood friend Sozin could be reasoned with. The Order knew better. Roku was an old man in his old age. He wouldn't last forever. And when the Avatar cycle reset, it would land amongst the airbenders.
Tashi brought the cup to his lips again, swallowing the hot liquid as he looked down at the courtyard below. A few early-rising young acolytes were already waking, their bright laughter echoing faintly up the stone steps as they swept the dew from the tiles. They were entirely defenseless. Their philosophy taught them that all life was sacred, that violence was a spiritual failure.
'If Sozin brings the fire he is forging', Tashi thought, his grip tightening around the warm clay of his cup until his knuckles turned white, 'pacifism won't be a virtue. It will be a shroud'.
The sun finally broke over the eastern peaks, flooding the valley with brilliant, golden light. It was a breathtakingly beautiful morning, the epitome of peace. Yet, as Tashi took the final, cooling sip of his tea, he had never felt more terrified. The White Lotus had sworn to protect the balance of the world behind the scenes, but standing here, watching the sunrise over a doomed paradise, Tashi wondered if they were already too late.
After finishing his morning tea, with some little aches in his joints, Tashi shuffled out of his room and waltzed out through the temple to spend a bit of meditation on his own before noon arrived and lunch was ready. As he strolled along a stone walkway, he paused and saw that one apprentice girl of Kelsang.
Withdrawing his hand out from his sleeves which had previously had both his hands inside each sleeve, he scratched at his head a bit. 'Hmm…' He mused, he was aware of Kelsang being a master now. How could he not? His former lover, now a fellow member of the order, was interested in how well the young girl matured faster than the rest of her peers.
'Old soul' she called it, and Paaru was even adamant that 'little Tanza' had a bright future ahead of her.
Back to reality though, as he watched as Tanza down below walked off towards the direction of the archives again, something he's been noticing every morning since she's been here; he pulled gently at his little beard on his chin, 'old soul' was more or less an often used term for gifted airbenders, who were often believed to have been reborn from a previous airbender who attained the highest spirituality.
But as Tashi watched Tanza turned around the corner of the building and disappear from his sight, he remembered Paaru's latest message; she was curious who Laya's lineage descended from, as perhaps there was more to Tanza's capability to understand how to airbend better than the rest of her peers so fast.
However, currently, the only thing he could dredge up so far was that Laya's parents were both airbenders, and theirs as well, and that was as far as their records could go. There was no identifying if she was distantly related to some past Avatar or not. And even then, it did not matter; the merits of Tanza's own capabilities were her own. Whether her talent was born of ancient blood or pure, individual genius, the result was the same, she was in charge of her own destiny.
Now, in the present, now given the chance to see where her intellect level was, he was given the chance to interact with Tanza for a bit via Pai Sho.
Tashi led her into a small, open pavilion where a polished wooden table sat under the shade of a curved stone roof. The Pai Sho board was already laid out, its grid carved deeply into the dark wood, with a heavy box of polished ceramic tiles resting to the side. The elder swept his heavy robes back and sat down cross-legged on a woven cushion, gesturing for Tanza to take the seat across from him.
Tanza hopped onto the opposite cushion, smoothing down her orange robes and sliding her hands onto her lap. She kept her face perfectly neutral, adopting the calm, ready posture of a diligent student.
Tashi opened the tile box, the ceramic pieces clicking softly against each other. Without looking up, he asked, "Do you know the general rules of Pai Sho, child?"
Tanza tilted her head slightly, her gaze dropping to the empty board. "Which variation, honorable elder?"
Tashi's hand paused over the tile box. He slowly raised his head, his stern eyes narrowing just a fraction as he looked across the table at the six-year-old girl. A normal child would have simply nodded or asked how to move the pieces.
"We are playing the traditional Air Nomad style," Tashi answered, his voice a flat, measured rasp. He picked up a white lotus tile, turning it slowly between his fingers. "And where, pray tell, did a young acolyte from the Western Temple learn that there is more than one version of the game?"
Tanza kept her expression completely calm and relaxed. "I learned during our recent stay at the Fire Sage temple, elder. The acolytes there played a version with very rigid, aggressive paths." she answered.
Tashi looked away from his white lotus piece and directly at her, giving a firm nod. "I see. Very good of you to notice such a difference," he remarked, approving of her ability to tell the variations apart. While he began laying down their respective pieces on the board to start the game, he looked back up. "And when did you play Pai Sho for the first time to know the difference so clearly?"
Tanza answered smoothly, "Granny Paaru introduced me to the game to help stimulate my mind while the rest of the girls were busy playing other games."
"That figures that Paaru would want to cultivate this young one's mind..." Tashi thought to himself, a silent understanding passing through him. It helped explain some things.
Once Tashi moved his first piece onto the board, he began questioning Tanza.
"So, child, what has your thoughts so preoccupied that you cannot see your own path before you?" he questioned.
Tanza reacted by letting an uncertain, hesitant look cross her features, a subtle shift that Tashi caught quickly.
"You'll never get anything done with a troubled mind like that, child. Speak!" Tashi pressed, his voice firm but steady. "I have spoken enough with your master to know you are observant enough of your surroundings."
And that was no lie. He had greeted the young master shortly after her arrival, congratulating Kelsang on her achievement of gaining her own apprentice. Kelsang had thanked him sincerely, remarking that her student possessed quite a bright mind and a deep willingness to learn more.
Meanwhile, Tanza found her own piece to finally move, sliding the ceramic tile across the grid before she finally spoke, all the while maintaining that look of youthful uncertainty.
"I am... indeed troubled, elder," Tanza admitted softly, letting her voice waver just enough. "I am... fearful of... things..."
Tashi raised a shaggy brow at her statement, his hand halting over his next set of tiles.
Tanza
She did her best to portray a hesitant child on the outside, but inside, her thoughts were a whirlwind. While it was reasonable in of itself for a man of his severe countenance to offer counsel to a young girl like her, Tanza was still debating what she was willing to say.
She might as well speak with him first, before she talks to her master, though perhaps she should have gone to her first, but she had been so preoccupied with various things during her trip, she was not sure if a 'six year' child concerned with the geopolitics of the world would be listened to be her master.
And where would she start with Kelsang? Perhaps this was just an opportunity in disguise? She can acquire separate perspectives on the growing tension across the world.
'But what else am I supposed to say? That I am uncertain about the time frame of the Fire Nation's attack on the Earth Kingdom after Roku's death!? That I've been piecing together that the Fire Nation has been gathering enough resources to launch a full-scale war on the coast of the Earth Kingdom? Or that once Roku is dead, we'll probably be targeted by them as well by assassins in the night!?'
Her mind was full of questions, and what was she to do? Vent?
…But Master Tashi is an Airbender Elder afterall, and while she barely knew much about him other than his name, the best she could guess from her experience with him right now was his strict nature and elderly status.
"I… " Her lips thinned as she gauged the board instead. Three moves in, but nothing to win yet. "I am…"
She looked up at the weathered face of the old man. Perhaps she could, if anything, gain some spiritual guidance from him. After all, that was what men his age were capable of. 'He's probably seen his own fair share of trouble in his nomadic years as well,' she reasoned, before finally being vocal.
"I am afraid of the Fire Nation's hostility."
Her eyes drifted up to meet his, and Tashi narrowed his own eyes at her in response.
"Master Kelsang's and my visit to one of their islands was met with… a rather harsh welcome…" Tanza explained. She had to begin somewhere, and perhaps that was the perfect place to start.
Tashi's hand remained perfectly still over the dark wood of the board for a long moment, the ceramic tile caught between his fingers. He slowly looked up, his severe eyes locking onto her small frame with a sudden, razor-sharp intensity.
For a second, the dour old monk seemed to completely vanish, replaced by something else, something that Tanza swore he knew more than she did, before it disappeared back to that grumpy exterior of a facial expression.
"A harsh welcome," Tashi repeated, his voice dropping into a flat, raspy hum. He placed a tile down with a firm, sharp click. "A reality of the world outside our peaks. Tell me, has your master informed you about the 'Guiding Wind' yet?"
Tanza kept her posture perfectly straight and gave a quiet nod of confirmation.
Tashi began laying down a few more of his pieces, his movements methodical and precise. "Then you must understand that your fears of the Fire Nation's hostility are indeed not found unwanting. The air outside our valleys is changing, and the firebells are ringing louder than they have in a century."
He paused, looking across the carved grid at her. "But you are a bit too young to know the full breadth of what is truly going on across the great oceans. The shifting of nations and the movement of fleets are heavy burdens, child."
Tanza reached into her box to start her next turn, her fingers brushing against her ceramic tiles as Tashi delivered his stern chide.
"The best you can do right now is train and prepare," Tashi lectured, gesturing vaguely toward the open courtyard beyond the pavilion. "You must not overthink these matters for yourself. The world is far bigger than you are, and it is a dangerous thing for a young mind to try and solve the puzzle of a whole continent."
He watched her carefully as she positioned her piece on the board. "Many moving pieces around the world are happening at this very moment. Chieftains are arguing, rulers are testing boundaries, and the currents are restless. But the more you fixate on things you cannot change, the less you will be able to focus on yourself and exactly what is in front of you. A scattered mind wins no matches, Tanza. Focus on your forms, and leave the weight of the world to the sky."
Tanza expected an answer like that—well, most of it anyway, though the latter half surprised her. She looked up at Elder Tashi's face, reasoning that since he was a temple elder, he would naturally hear many things from traveling airbender masters visiting the peaks.
Placing another ceramic piece down on the grid, she successfully put herself at a leading advantage before she responded. "But elder, that is… not the only thing that troubles me…" She focused her gaze back on him. "It's Avatar Roku…"
She paused as Tashi placed his own piece, smoothly countering her lead and locking her into a few clever traps.
"He's obviously not going to be among us for much longer," Tanza continued, allowing a grimace to cross her face. She did her best to act like a concerned child, deeply afraid of a future without an Avatar to mediate the growing tensions between nations. "And when he's gone, the next Avatar will be an airbender…"
After all, that fear was entirely true in of itself. She was genuinely concerned for the future, and her calculations all pointed to the Air Nomads possibly getting violently dragged into a future war between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation.
Sighing through her grimace, she looked directly up at the elder. "What's to say they won't send people to… hurt us?" She carefully withheld the word assassinate from her vocabulary. How would a six-year-old know such a word? The simpler phrase was the better way for now.
Tanza watched the elder closely, her eyes tracking his hand as it completely froze mid-air. The dark tile remained clutched tightly between his fingers, and a heavy, dead silence suddenly fell over the pavilion.
She noticed that he didn't move or even blink. For a long, intense second, Tashi simply stared directly at her, his severe eyes searching her face as if he were trying to pull apart her thoughts. To a normal child, the unmoving stare might have been intimidating, but Tanza merely kept her innocent, concerned grimace locked in place, waiting to see how her probe had landed.
Slowly, Tashi pulled his hand back. Instead of placing the aggressive trap he had been setting, he lowered his tile into a much more defensive position on the edge of the board. When he finally spoke, his voice was lower and rasper than usual, stripped of its previous grumpy edge.
"You speak of shadows that have not yet cast their shape, Tanza," Tashi said, his tone dropping into a quiet whisper. He leaned slightly forward across the table. "The Avatar cycle is a sacred law. To interfere with it, to come into our sanctuaries with the intent to... do harm, would be to invite the wrath of the entire world upon themselves. The Fire Nation leaders are proud, but they are not fools."
He paused, his weathered fingers lightly tapping the side of the dark wooden board before he gestured with a slow wave of his sleeve toward the open sky outside the pavilion.
"Besides, you forget the nature of our home," he continued, his voice returning to its normal, flat cadence. "The Air Temples have stood for thousands of years, protected by the very cliffs and mountains. No army can march up these spires, and no enemy can surprise us when our gliders patrol the clouds. You are letting your young imagination spin a tragedy out of a few cold glares at a harbor."
He placed his final piece down, the click of the ceramic tile surprisingly soft against the dark wood. He looked back up at her, his expression fully resetting into his familiar, grumpy scowl.
"Do not borrow tomorrow's trouble when you have yet to survive today's match," Tashi chided, pointing a weathered finger at the grid. "Your line is completely exposed on the eastern flank. Move your tile, child, and keep your eyes on the board. The sky will look after itself."
"Your line is completely exposed on the eastern flank." Echoed in her mind.
Tanza's eyes darted down to the wooden grid, her mind completely freezing on those specific words. 'Wait… eastern flank?'
Her mind scrambled to align the geography of the world. The Fire Nation lay across the western ocean. If the west was the source of the threat, then the eastern flank of the global map represented the vast, vulnerable coastline of the Earth Kingdom.
Her gaze snapped back up to the old man's severe, unblinking face, her thoughts spinning into a whirlwind of intense calculation. "Is he doing this on purpose? Is he treating this board game as a coded way to discuss the geopolitics of the Earth Kingdom!?"
It made an incredible amount of sense. Tashi was a high-ranking elder; he knew the temple rules strictly forbade the monks from engaging in military planning or global politics. If a clear-eyed master wanted to test a promising young acolyte's strategic mind and warn her about how easily the Earth Kingdom's defenses could fall without breaking his vows of peace, a game of Pai Sho was the perfect camouflage. He was hiding a real-world defensive briefing right in front of her eyes, using the ceramic tiles to represent the vulnerable continental coast.
"He isn't just a grumpy stick in the mud!" Tanza realized, a surge of profound, professional respect washing through her. "He's a realist who understands the global logistics. He probably knows the entire eastern theater is completely wide open to a western naval assault, and he's using this match to see if I have the brain to recognize the trap!"
Forcing her breathing to remain completely calm, Tanza looked back down at the exposed tiles on the right side of the board. She couldn't afford to play the role of a clueless child anymore. If this was a test of her ability to secure a massive continental line under pressure, she needed to show him she understood the value of a strong defense.
"I see it, elder," Tanza said softly, her voice carrying a sudden, focused edge as she reached into her tile box. She pulled out a solid, defensive stone, sliding it precisely into place to block his advance. "The eastern flank will be reinforced."
Tashi chided her, pointing out that she was focusing too much on only one single defense tile. He paused for a moment, his eyes looking down at her and the table, before methodically clacking a few attacking pieces across the board to shatter her formation.
"Reinforcement will not stem a tide, child," Tashi chided her firmly, his voice flat and dry. "Not with a single move like that."
Tanza's mind instantly shifted the advice back onto a global scale. "He's right," she realized, a cold surge of clarity hitting her. "Beyond this game, he is showing me that a single defensive front will easily fall under a massive naval force. Static trench lines and solo coastal defenses are entirely useless against a modern, coordinated offensive."
Tashi watched her focus intently on the disrupted grid, and he offered a rare, slight nod. "While you probably can see an unseen future conflict in this game, a real conflict between nations has many more moving pieces than what we have here on this wood. It is something far beyond a simple board."
Tanza kept her face neutral, but internally she was practically vibrating with professional respect. To her, this was the ultimate confirmation. The strict old elder had just openly admitted that they were playing a simulation of the coming conflict. He was telling her that global warfare required total mobilization and a deeper understanding of logistics than a basic frontline grid.
The heavy click of a final tile hitting the center of the board cut through the tense atmosphere of the pavilion.
Tashi withdrew his hand back into his long sleeve, his severe taking in the grid one last time before he gave a slow, decisive nod. The pieces sat frozen at an absolute standstill, a complex grid of interlocking offenses and defenses where neither side could advance without risking immediate destruction.
"We will call it an end here for now," Tashi announced, his flat, raspy voice returning to its normal, grumpy cadence as he broke the heavy silence. "It is time for lunch. A hungry belly is a poor place to cultivate discipline, and the dining hall will not wait for us to untangle this mess."
Tanza smoothly pulled her hands back into her lap, inside, however, her mind was rapidly memorizing the final state of the board. "A stalemate," she mentally thought with internal annoyance. He had called the match to a halt the exact moment she proved she could match his offensive pressure with her own defensive logistics.
Standing up from his woven cushion with a slight, familiar ache in his joints, Tashi shuffled his hands back into his wide orange sleeves. He looked down at the tiny six-year-old girl, his expression still naturally dour but carrying a settled weight of approval.
"Go on then, child," Tashi chuffed softly, shooing her toward the pavilion exit with a slight nod of his head. "Go fill your stomach and clear your head before you find yourself colliding with any more elders in the hallways."
"Thank you for the lesson, honorable elder," Tanza remarked obediently, offering a respectful, traditional bow.
Turning on her heel, she walked out of the pavilion and back into the warm, bright sunlight of the temple courtyard. Her steps were light, but her mind was entirely set. She had entered the archives looking for simple information, but she was leaving with something infinitely more valuable: the knowledge that she wasn't the only realist hiding behind an orange robe.